The company Utility Bidder recently published a study presenting the 100 most polluted cities in the world. It includes several French cities, with Nice ranked in 42nd position!
Utility Bidder, founded in 2009 and based in Corby, England, is a company specializing in reducing gas and electricity costs. On its website, the company published a study conducted in May 2021 that ranks the 100 most polluted cities in the world.
This study was conducted considering air quality, CO2 emissions, and road congestion (the impact caused by traffic jams). These three criteria were then combined to provide a representative score out of 10 known as the “pollution score.”
The top 5 is primarily composed of capitals from the American continent, with the exception of Rotterdam, which is ranked 4th with a score of 4.96/10. Lima (Peru) takes the first position with a score of 6.35/10. Following are Bogotá and Santiago, the capitals of Colombia and Chile, respectively, with scores of 5.40/10 and 5.27/10, and finally Mexico City (Mexico) with a score of 4.93/10.
Conversely, the study also lists the top 3 least polluted cities, including Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, Ravenna in northern Italy, and Aarhus in Denmark.
In this ranking, there are also 3 French cities: Paris (39th), Nice (42nd), and Nancy (86th). Indeed, the city of Nice finds itself in this unfavorable ranking, with its air quality rated at 40. Far from Lima’s score of 187, it remains a poor score nonetheless. According to the study, each resident of Nice would produce an average of 6 tons of Mt CO2e (equivalent carbon dioxide).
Nice has a road congestion level of 25%, meaning that an average 30-minute journey in the city takes 25% longer than it should on uncongested roads. The French capital, Paris, known for its numerous traffic jams, reaches a congestion level of 37%.
With these three criteria, the pollution score attributed to Nice is 3.08/10. Although this score is not among the highest compared to those mentioned above, it still significantly reflects the city’s high level of pollution.
