New overarching European pollution directive agreed by national environment ministers

You are not
logged in
ť Log in here

News Categories

This story is tagged with the following keywords

New overarching European pollution directive agreed by national environment ministers

23 March 2010

European environment ministers have reached agreement on the text of the Industrial Emissions Directive, a major piece of legislation that will revise and replace the IPPC and seven other standalone directives.
European Union environment ministers have reached a common position, or agreement in principle, on the latest revision of the EU's chief piece of legislation for controlling pollution, the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) directive.
The revision has been thrashed out by officials negotiating their way through a large work programme. The result of their efforts is the Industrial Emissions Directive, which will incorporate the IPPC and seven other previously standalone directives into one.
The new directive seeks to limit the pollution of air, water and soil arising from industrial installations. It does so by regulating emissions for a wide range of pollutants, including sulphur and nitrogen compounds, dust particles, asbestos and heavy metals. Although there have been discussions about limiting carbon dioxide too, the directive currently does not cover carbon, leaving CO2 to the Emissions Trading Scheme and other initiatives.
*A workable solution*
"I think basically we can live with it," says John Scowcroft, head of environment at Eurelectric, the European generators' association. That said, Eurelectric, like other industry lobby groups, is wary about possible changes that MEPs might try to introduce when it goes before the European Parliament, which could make the Industrial Emissions Directive significantly worse from the standpoint of major combustion plant operators.
"It's clear that the oldest of our generation capacity could not economically meet the new emissions limits by 2016, so we will need transition mechanisms, otherwise there's a serious risk of 'carbon lock-in' and price increases," says Scowcroft.
"We in Europe are committed to move to carbon-neutral power generation by 2050. If we can't make a transition to low-carbon technology in an orderly way, we're going to have to take short-term measures to fill the gap and that's carbon lock-in - you build something between now and 2020 that's got 20 years' life and although in today's terms it might be considered relatively low carbon, if you look where we've got to be by 2050 it represents a significant lock-in of carbon," he says.
*The water sector's view*
Eureau represents water and wastewater companies at a European level. It similarly sees the proposed new directive as a piece of legislation it can work with, at least in its current form. Durk Krol, deputy secretary general of Eureau, says his members back the working group's changes as "an improvement on both the European Parliament's first reading and the European Commission's original proposal".
Originally, the directive would have required water treatment plant operators to apply costly biological and chemical treatment in the recovery of non-hazardous waste. Krol says this would have imposed burdens unnecessarily because these activities are "already adequately regulated under existing instruments such as the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive".
Ministers have diluted these requirements but not altogether dispensed with them. Eureau wants "further improvement" in this area and has drafted an amendment to that effect.
"We believe that the recycling of treated sewage sludge (as originally proposed by Brussels) should be exempted... since its inclusion will incur significant costs for no discernible environmental benefits. We do not believe we should be discouraging recycling initiatives with additional cost penalties," he says.
"Municipal wastewater treatment plants, which are already regulated by the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, have biological and physicochemical treatment facilities. In addition, water treatment plants for drinking water supplies have physicochemical treatment facilities. Emissions from these processes are already captured by water, groundwater and air quality legislation."
*Timetable for implementation*
Another significant change agreed by the environment ministers is that the standards should be applied to new combustion plants no later than two years after the directive comes into effect. Previously, this deadline had been set as 1 January, 2016. However, the ministers also added some derogations for combustion plant and introduced a review clause. They also provided for existing emissions limit values to continue until new ones are adopted.
Joe Hennon, the Commission's environment spokesman, says Brussels will make its detailed views known when the package is sent to the European Parliament.
Clearly, a lot now depends on the reaction of MEPs to the new text. The matter is in the hands of the Parliament's environment committee, which is due to begin work soon.
Under the timetable laid down, the Parliament will give the directive a second reading within three months and will have its first debate on the text probably during the session of 15-17 March.
At its first reading last year, the Parliament supported the setting of limits of polluting emissions but said that "to reduce widespread recourse to exemptions, which lead to market distortions, some minimum emissions limit values, which cannot be exceeded in any way, must be set by the Commission, using the comitology procedure". In other words, through committees composed of representatives of the EU member countries.
Commission officials indicated that the agreement reached last month (February) between environment ministers has set in motion a process that could see this crucial directive becoming law this year, perhaps even by the summer.
Source: Utility Week

permanent link