EU lawmakers strike deal on revised IPPC law
European Parliament and member state negotiators reached an agreement on the revision of the IPPC directive on industrial pollution on Friday, ENDS has learned. The deal will lead to a new law incorporating IPPC and six other pollution laws.
One of the revision's most controversial aspects has been provisions relating to large combustion plants (LCPs), particularly derogations from complying with stricter NOx and SO2 emission limits proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2007.
Under Friday's agreement, certain LCPs will have until 30 June 2020 to comply with the limits, one year later than what the parliament's environment committee demanded in May. Member states had initially called for a 31 December 2021 deadline.
A limited lifetime derogation will only be granted to LCPs operating less than 17,500 hours in total, again a compromise between the 20,000 hours proposed by the Council of Ministers and the environment committee's May request for 12,500 hours.
LCPs using indigenous solid fuels such as lignite will be allowed to apply minimum desulphurisation rates set in annex V of the new law instead of complying with SO2 limits. MEPs had wanted this derogation to end in 2017. EU negotiators agreed the commission should review it in 2019.
Another controversial aspect of the IPPC revision was the proposed conditions for deviating from best available techniques (BAT), the idea being to have stricter conditions after studies showed that too many pollution permits deviated from BAT.
Under the deal, the two conditions for deviating – geographical location or local environmental conditions and technical characteristics – should also show that applying BAT would lead to "disproportionately high costs". MEPs wanted this requirement attached only to the second condition.
The negotiators dropped a safeguard clause introduced by MEPs that would prevent national authorities from granting BAT derogations that would cause significant damage to the environment. This is now only an aspirational goal, ENDS understands.
The deal backs minimum emission limit values proposed by German MEP Holger Krahmer for sectors with a high environmental impact or where BAT is not properly implemented. The limits will be decided though the co-decision procedure following sectoral assessments. No deadline has been set for the first reports.
Green group EEB said the deal contained some improvements but also many weaknesses, especially regarding LCP derogations. In particular, it condemned the "inflexibility and stubbornness" of the UK, Italy, Poland and several other eastern European member states, who pushed hard for such derogations.
Friday's agreement must be formally adopted by the parliament's full assembly and the Council of Ministers before becoming law. It follows a deal on timber on Wednesday. Both deals are among Spain's main environmental achievements during its EU presidency.
