Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Barcelona has more cars with ECO badges (24.7% of the total) than with yellow B badges (18.1%), the former outnumbering the latter since February 2023. The Barcelona Ring Roads Low Emissions Zone has enabled the city to consolidate a trend which has seen the number of clean vehicles reach record levels. The number of cars in other categories remains stable, with 52% of vehicles holding the green badge and 1,2% with no badge.

The presence of cleaner vehicles has meant an improvement in air quality in the city, demonstrating the need for the LEZ to cut emissions from traffic, the main source of pollution in Barcelona.

For the first time, all the stations around the network of air-pollution monitoring points show that the regulatory levels of NO2 have not been exceeded this year. The regulations set the average annual threshold at 40 µg/m3 and for the moment the highest average annual figure in the city stands at 34 µg/m3, in L’Eixample.

Another factor which has influenced the transformation of the recorded body of vehicles in the city is age. While at a national level the average age of vehicles has risen from 12 to 13.9 years (an increase of 1.9 years), in Barcelona that figure is just 0.7, rising from 10.5 to 11.2 years.