Sustainable environmental protection through

Europe’s - Emissions Directive

European institutions are close to finalizing the second reading of the Industrial
Emissions Directive (IED). CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council, supports
the objectives of the Directive. CEFIC, suggests the Directive “would be more effective
in ensuring sustainable environmental protection if it took greater account of different
local needs and circumstances. A justified flexibility is here definitely needed.” The IED
aims to regulate industrial operators in a global EU framework of permits. It matters for
all of us because the objective is to manage pollution arising from a wide variety of
industrial and agricultural activities, including the production of metals and chemicals.
Just as Europe must be seen as whole, environment requires comprehensive
protection.
To achieve this ambition of a high protection, optimized in the long term both from an
environmental and economical point of view, the protection provided by the IED needs
to be effective by leaving some room for subsidiary, being experience- driven and cost-
effective to ensure optimal societal benefit.
A balanced implementation of these principles must be secured.
The next vote of the European Parliament should take into account such principles
where applying to the text on which the European Council of Ministers has reached
political agreement. This April, the environment committee of the Parliament will indeed
adopt the draft on the occasion of the second reading of the IED directive.
The IED draft follows the path of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control
Directive (IPPC). CEFIC’s members support the principles of the current IPPC, and are
willing to help ensure the Directive is fully implemented consistently across the EU. The
new IED uses the cornerstones of the IPPC like the Best Available Techniques (BAT),
which are the methods currently available to industry that best provide for protection of
the environment.
Avoid disproportionate changes for a better environmental protection
Manufacturing sites are currently regulated under the IPPC Directive. The chemicals
sector aims to achieve a sustainable chemical industry by supporting innovation and
competitiveness whilst reducing its impact on the environment. For environmental and
economic reasons, industry strives for efficiency when designing manufacturing
processes to minimize emissions and resource use.
The IPPC is a complex “learning by doing system, which has required time and
extensive collaboration between all stakeholders at European and national levels. The
IPPC had begun to deliver environmental improvements showing that it had a lot of
potential; this trend should not be reversed by disproportionate changes in the IED.”
Tighter emissions limit values?
As the IPPCs implementation was reported to be uneven across some Member States,
the EC launched a reshaping process with several key ideas: have a more stringent
approach for more consistent implementation; set tighter Europe- wide emissions limit
values for large combustion plants; and establish an initial quantitative soil assessment
with remediation to the original state when the permit ceases.
Some key inputs from the Chemical Industry
Cefic supports regulations that stimulate innovative developments to reduce emissions.
As the chemical industry is in a way “the industry of industry, as it has many
downstream users, its experience and added value to this debate are worth being
mentioned. The challenge ahead is to balance environmental, economic and societal
issues to achieve the goal of environmental protection in a sustainable way.
“These issues include recognition of different local conditions such as topography,
climate, the wide variety of manufacturing processes or of different types of plants and
installations. The IED, therefore, needs to allow a fully justified flexibility based on an
environmental, technical as well as an economic assessment. In that respect, local
competent authorities are best placed to implement and use, in a transparent and public
way, the provisions of the IED to take into account these local variations.”
Empower competent authorities to manage emissions
Over-simplicity can be counterproductive if local and specific needs are not taken into
consideration. One size does not fit all. Looking for optimally tackling emissions will only
be a success if the new IED leaves a space to subsidiarity, empowering local actors to
capture the complexity of the environment and find the best possible efficiency in each
case taking into account local characteristics when deciding how to manage emissions
This proportionate implementation of the emissions regulations is all the more important
since the IED follows an integrated approach, taking into consideration all emissions,
their origins and destinations. The setting of a parameter must be proportionate so as to
optimize the management of emissions criteria. The reduction of an emission limit must
be shaped so as to avoid disproportionate growth of another emission value. All
parameters cannot be optimized at once: proper attention must be paid to side effects
so as to minimize them when possible.
An improvement of environmental protection based on experience
That is why CEFIC advocates that the expertise of the EU stakeholders (experts,
authorities&) should be taken into account when adopting decisions based on Best
Available Techniques (BAT), through the information exchange forum called the ‘Sevilla
Process.’ Such stakeholders know how far it is realistic to improve environmental
protection given available technologies and potentially better ones. They need to be
well involved, in the spirit of the previous directive IPPC, in the legislative process of
defining standards. Emission limit values must be set via an analysis of best available
techniques by good performers, but avoiding taking single plants or technical examples
deprived of substantial feedback. Such an exchange of EU- wide, appropriate
information and of collective experience must be the basis for setting environmental
standards.
What about industrial liability?
To maximize real environmental benefits and to minimize unnecessary costs, a risk-
based approach must be used when monitoring soil and groundwater and when
deciding on soil remediation at cessation of activity. It is indeed essential to give
potential investors legal and financial certainty. When investing in an existing site,
operators must be in a position to understand what their financial liability would be in
relation to past activities of previous operators and to their own activities. The risk-
based approach would definitely help deliver this. A big benefit of this approach would
be to help avoiding using new sites for new activities: a better legal security would not
frighten investors to use old sites and would enable them to appreciate their return on
investment. A good environmental protection means also a good space and time
consideration.
CEFIC supports the possibility of progressively planned compliance with emission limit
values by means of transitional national plans. The definition and implementation of
standards must take into account investment cycles and previous legislation such as
the Large Combustion Plants Directive.
Find the right balance
Protecting the environment as a whole when regulating industrial emissions does
not preclude a strong and innovative European chemical industry, provided the
right balance between economic, environmental and social aspects can be found.
CEFIC is engaging in the debate for a more sustainable framework for protection
of the environment.

Mircea Halaciuga, Esq

0040.724581078
Finante/Servicii financiare/Investitii