Determination of ‘Best Available Techniques’ for Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control: A Life Cycle Approach

European IPPC BAT Reference Documents

The European Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive 96/61/EC aims to introduce a European-wide system of integrated prevention and control of pollution in order to secure a high level of protection to the environment as a whole. It places obligations on the Member States (MS) to introduce controls that ensure operators comply with the Directive. In this framework, as a part of the implementation process leading to formal accession of Cyprus to the European Union, the National Technical University of Athens has examined all documents related to the Best Available Techniques (BATs) published by Institutes and Organisations, such as the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Spain, the Environmental Protection Agency in Ireland, the World Bank Group and the Ministry for the Environment, Planning and Public Works in Greece. A series of guidelines were developed for the application of BATs for 14 categories of the Cypriot industry that fall into the IPPC Directive. The concept of BATs plays a central role in the Directive because it provides a basis for setting Emission Limit Values (ELVs) as well as the principal benchmark for determining the obligations of industrial operators in respect of pollution prevention and control. This paper presents the guidelines for cement manufacture in Cyprus.

Analysis of the slaughterhouses in Galicia (NW Spain)

The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive and its implications for the environment and industrial activities in Europe

The paper examines how the concept of ‘excessive costs’ has been interpreted in the implementation of industrial pollution control in the UK. Since 1984, industrial air pollution regulation in the EU has been guided by the framework concept of Best Available Technology Not Entailing Excessive Costs (BATNEEC). With the introduction of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive in 1996, this has been replaced by the concept of Best Available Techniques (BAT). Despite the absence of the NEEC qualification, IPPC BAT includes excessive costs in its definition of ‘available’. Both concepts require interpretation and both devolve potentially controversial decisions to the level of the individual site regulator. A central issue in interpreting ‘excessive costs’ is the relative importance of environmental cost–benefit analysis versus the ability of a sector to ‘afford’ environmental improvements. Also important is how such concepts can be operationalized by regulators who lack resources and depend upon industry for information. The paper provides a historical account of how these issues have been dealt with in the UK and argues that the key difficulties are far from being resolved. The paper concludes by assessing the implications for the future implementation of IPPC. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)

The principles introduced by the Directive Concerning Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) (currently known as the Industrial Emissions Directive (2010/75/EU)) are innovative and have raised interests in the framework of the literature debate on environmental regulation. Many articles describe and analyze the application of the Directive in European countries, but only a few articles focus on how the interest for the Directive’s principles, including the integrated approach, have reached countries outside the European Union. This paper aims to contribute to this topic, describing the experience of the authors in carrying out an EU-funded project on transferring the IPPC approach and Best Available Techniques (BAT) concepts to three Arab countries, i.e., Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. The paper presents the experience referring to two sectors falling within the scope of the IPPC Directive: the textile and dairy sector. The objectives, methodologies, activities and experiences are described and can be used and valorized to integrate the IPPC approach and BAT concepts in the current environmental legislation of the three countries.

Integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC)

The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive has been for the first time published in 1996 (Council Directive 96/61/EC). It was amended in 2008 and now it has been replaced by the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) n.75/2010. The IPPC Directive represents one of the main important policy tool of European Union to manage the emissions of industrial activities and to achieve a higher level of protection of environment as a whole. The Directive asks to the Competent Authorities to issue an unique permit for the industrial installations where are included limits, monitoring frequencies and operational requirements referred to all environmental aspects (water emissions, air emissions, soil, etc.) In literature we can find several studies about policies assessment. In this framework we can observe that not so many authors have studied the IPPC Directive. In addition the papers related to the assessment of the IPPC Directive are referred mainly to discuss about the effectiveness of the Directive in the implementation of Best Available Techniques (BAT) and the improvement of environmental performance of the companies in the scope of the Directive. Besides the few papers or technical reports focused on the implementation of the IPPC Directive from a legislative and administrative perspective have never studied in depth the contents of the issued permits. The objective of our paper is to bridge this gap presenting the results of an empirical research carried out by the authors in the framework of an European project named MED IPPC NET. The authors investigated 62 IPPC permits of landfill sector issued in seven European Regions: Andalusia and Valencia (Spain), Tuscany, Piedmont and Sicily (Italy), West Macedonia (Greece) and Slovenia. The research aimed to identify the differences in the Emissions Limit Values, monitoring frequencies, operational requirements imposed to installations of the same sector but with permits issued in different Competent Authorities. The results demonstrate relevant disparities not always justifiable by the flexibility given by the Directive to the Member States and Competent Authorities to implement the Directive.

In the present study, several water recovery and end-of-pipe wastewater treatment alternatives were evaluated towards the evaluation of Best Available Techniques (BATs) for the management of wastewaters from a denim textile mill in accordance with the European Union's Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive. For this purpose, an assessment that translates the key environmental aspects into a quantitative measure of environmental performance and also financial analysis was performed for each of the alternatives. The alternatives considered for water recovery from dyeing wastewaters were nanofiltration (NF) with coagulation and/or microfiltration (MF) pre-treatment, ozonation or peroxone and Fenton oxidation. On the other hand, for the end-of-pipe treatment of the mill's mixed wastewater, ozonation, Fenton oxidation, membrane bioreactor (MBR) and activated sludge (AS) process followed by membrane filtration technologies were evaluated. The results have indicated that membrane filtration process with the least environmental impacts is the BAT for water recovery. On the other side, MBR technology has appeared as the BAT for the end-of-pipe treatment of the mill's mixed wastewater. A technical and financial comparison of these two BAT alternatives revealed that water recovery via membrane filtration from dyeing wastewaters is selected as the BAT for the water and wastewater management in the mill.

Since its creation, the European Union (EU) has developed a substantial amount of environmental legislation in the form of directives, regulations and decisions which are applicable to all the Member States. However, mining policy in the EU has been driven mainly by industrial considerations: the energy extractive industry being covered by the Directorate General Transport and Energy (DG TREN) and non-energy by DG Enterprise. For historical and economic reasons mining had been specifically excluded from much of the environmental policy developed by DG Environment. In the aftermath of the Baia Mare accident, the European Commission created a Task Force that proposed a plan of action with ideas for new legislation. They included the amendment of the Seveso II Directive and the production a document on Best Available Techniques (BAT) for the environmental control of mineral processing, similar to those produced under the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive. The main policy development has been a new Directive on the management of waste from the extractive industry, currently under discussion and expected to be approved in 2005. This article reviews the coverage of mine water in European legislation before and after these recent legislative changes from the point of view of the Water Framework Directive. Six critical issues are identified: the need to cover energy and non-energy industries, full life-cycle approach, mine water in the BAT document, mine voids in the mine waste initiative, abandoned mines and the whole catchment approach. The conclusion is that although the new policies constitute a substantial improvement in the regulatory framework of the EU, they address only some of the key issues. In particular, the full life-cycle and catchment approaches have not been sufficiently taken into account by legislators.

Using BAT performance as an evaluation method of techniques

Integrated pollution prevention and control—the Finnish approach

Fuzzy Logic Model for the performance benchmarking of sugar plants by considering best available techniques

This paper describes how Directive 96/61/CE -- Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) has introduced the principle of pollution prevention and control by using the Best Available Techniques (BAT). The necessity to revamp the plants according to the highest European standards is also discussed. The definition and identification of what can be considered the BAT for an existing plant is a very complex and difficult process. In order to identify environmentally critical aspects and impacts a detailed plant and process performance analysis is needed; a complete benchmarking with European and BREF performances is also needed. TRR in order to meet these requirements has developed a methodology that has been tested on several Italian plants in IPPC authorization request: Pollution Reduction Analysis (PRA). PRA will be described in this paper, showing some application examples. The PRA is a detailed process and emission parameter analysis allows one to pinpoint the instruments to meet the emission targets defined by BAT, choosing between the different alternative technologies proposed. The analysis allows one to pinpoint deviations/anomalies, causes and technical interventions that can produce useful results for the environment, for consumption reduction and an optimization of the resources used.