Environment ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday have raised concerns over a proposal to set minimum emission limits for further industrial activities under the EU’s 1996 integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive.
A majority of ministers said the proposal backed by the parliament’s environment committee in January would create unnecessary administrative burden and discourage national authorities from applying best available techniques (BAT) when setting permit conditions.
Existing legislation sets minimum emission limits for large combustion plants (LCPs), waste incineration, solvents and titanium dioxide. The parliament’s environment committee wants to apply such limits to other industrial sectors. The idea is to create a “European safety net” to make sure plant operators cannot deviate from certain levels.
But several governments called the limits “superfluous” and said they would be potentially confusing for plants operators and national authorities because permit conditions are supposed to be based on BAT guidance documents, according to written comments submitted prior to the ministerial meeting.
During Monday’s meeting, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said setting such limits for other sectors was “not necessary today”. Most ministers said these limits should not be set through the EU’s comitology procedure, as proposed by the environment committee.
The ministers backed a Czech presidency proposal to apply more stringent emission limits for LCPs by 2016 while at the same time giving certain installations another four years to comply. But several governments such as Poland asked for greater leeway.
Hungary argued that the costs of upgrading large combustion plants were “not in proportion to air quality benefits they might yield”, and that they would lead to “distortions in the competitiveness of the [LCP] sector”. But Mr Dimas said delaying implementation of the proposed LCP limits would have a negative impact on EU air quality objectives.
A large number of governments also reiterated their opposition to extending the scope of the IPPC directive to smaller LCP plants between 20 and 50 megawatts.
The European parliament is due to vote on the IPPC proposals on 12 March. The Czech presidency is hoping to reach a council agreement on the plans at environment ministers’ next meeting in June.