Up to speed with IPPC

Companies throughout the process industries cannot fail to be aware of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control regime - most have either made, or are in the process of making, an application for a permit under IPPC.

It's undoubtedly one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation to arrive on the statute books. It goes significantly beyond previous requirements and may prove the most demanding in terms of money, resources, time and effort.

So where does this leave UK industries who are currently going through the process of obtaining their IPPC permits? Are there likely to be further demands on top of what they're already doing? There are undoubtedly some strategic issues which all companies, regardless of the sector they're in or which stage of the IPPC process they've reached, need to bear in mind.

Firstly, they will have to keep up to speed with new legislative developments and any emerging new technologies which the regulators might require them to install to ensure that their environmental standards are monitored, maintained and improved on an ongoing basis. Underlying IPPC is an ongoing requirement for continual improvement; in other words, the process doesn't stop once the permit's been issued.

On a purely practical note, operators should be aware of the relatively slow progress the Environment Agency is making in processing individual applications. Concern has been expressed in a variety of quarters about the Agency's current backlog - by the end of April the Agency had received over 800 applications and has issued more than 500 permits.

A further 800 applications are expected in the next 12 months. The original target of the four-month period outlined in the Regulations has been revised to determine 75% of applications within eight months. To put this in context, some 6000 sites are due to fall under the IPPC regime as it is phased in, up to 2007.

Andrew Cluett, of the Environmental Industries Commission, recently said that 'At the current rate of progress, permitting will be complete in 2054'!

Likewise, operators also need to know that although IPPC is not due to be fully implemented until 2007, the EC has already launched consultations on the strengths and weaknesses of the directive and ideas for future developments of EU policies.

Prompted by its initial review in June last year which concluded that 'Member States are not doing enough to ensure that their industries are meeting EU pollution control standards', the Commission is due shortly to publish a report based on the outcome of the consultation exercise.

The UK government believes it would be inappropriate to make significant changes to a Directive whose full benefits and achievement of its stated purpose cannot be properly assessed, and that the EU's priority should be to ensure that member and candidate states can implement IPPC correctly. However, it remains to be seen whether the EC will take this on board.

Applicants also need to understand that the regulators cannot use 'the lack of profitability of a particular business' to make exceptions for individual companies except in extremely limited circumstances. So any business pinning their hopes on using poor business conditions in their industry or region as a means of avoiding IPPC-related expenditure can think again.

The latest IPPC Guidance Guide states that 'if it has been established that a particular technique is BAT (Best Available Technique) within a certain sector, then the regulator should normally impose the Emission Limit Values that correspond to the use of that technique in all permits for that sector... operators and regulators should both take account of any new developments in techniques after a guidance note is published'.

Operators should also keep a weather eye on the Environmental Liability Directive (2004/35/CE) which came into effect on 21 April and has not yet been implemented in the UK. The first EU law based on the 'polluter pays' principle, the Directive is intended to ensure that environmental damage is prevented or remedied and that those who cause it are held responsible.

The Government has said that 'the UK is concerned that making operators liable for damage resulting from their activities where those activities are fully consistent with an IPPC permit places an inappropriate burden of uncertainty upon operators and their insurers'. However, no-one currently knows what additional burdens the new Directive might impose in terms of cost, workload and operational requirements.

An additional area of concern is the IPPC's requirement for the effect of environmental impacts on human health to be taken into account. While the regulations introduced a new requirement for health authorities to be consulted on every permit application, the new regime has exposed a worrying lack of expertise on pollution and health in both Primary Care Trusts and the Environment Agency.

Even the draft guidance issued by the Health Protection Agency to Health Authorities in April has not yet been finalised. The guidance notes that 'on occasions the sheer volume of demand or the particular complexity of specific applications will require a level of expertise not ordinarily available'.

All industries will have IPPC-related problems which are unique both to their own sector and to individual sites. For example, the pulp and paper sector benefited from concessions allowing applications to be submitted based on their existing environmental performance, with extra baseline information being submitted up to three years later. However, the technical document on which these original requirements were based is coming up for review.

A recent EU analysis of the impact of IPPC said that there was evidence to suggest that the document's technical level was eroded to 'just above average' by the 'fierce and sustained lobbying' of the Confederation for European Pulp and Papermaking Industries 'to a point that would challenge only the poorest performing mills in the European Union'.

The paper sector should be readying itself for further action. The glass industry is trying to reconcile the installation of abatement technologies - including the disputed selection of electrostatic precipitators (ESP) by the regulator as BAT for dust emissions - with its Climate Change Levy obligations.

Industry body British Glass comments that 'the installation of ESP, let alone other abatement technologies, throughout the UK represents an investment of scores of millions of pounds. It is estimated that complete abatement implementation in glass plants would increase energy consumption by up to 3% per annum.'

Even at this relatively early stage of IPPC, changes are undoubtedly on the way. Keeping up to speed is likely to present UK regulators and businesses alike with considerable challenges.

(Elaine Coles is a consultant with IMS Marketing Communications Group, specialising in environment business issues.)

<b>Complex rules for waste</b>

The Environmental Services Association (ESA) is the UK's sectoral trade association for the managers of waste and secondary resources.

In the UK, the Government has chosen to implement the requirements of the Landfill Directive through the pollution prevention and control (PPC) regime, thus requiring all landfill sites currently regulated under the Waste Management Licensing regime to obtain a PPC permit by 2007.

Operators intending to operate a new landfill, or make a substantial change to an existing site, will require a PPC permit before commencing activities. However, the Environment Agency (EA) chose to permit over 900 existing landfills in tranches, with applications due by specified dates between June 2003 and May 2006.

A PPC permit differs from an existing waste management licence in that it must be issued to the operator of the 'installation', which may be bigger than the landfill and will include technically connected activities, such as gas combustion equipment and leachate treatment works.

To obtain a PPC permit for a landfill, operators must also comply with the landfill regulations, which include requirement for waste acceptance procedures; pretreatment requirements for wastes; prohibition of certain waste types; specific measures to control landfill gas production and utilisation; and compliant engineering standards.

In the absence of statutory guidance from DEFRA, the EA has produced its own regulatory guidance interpreting PPC and the section of landfill legislation which have caused problems for landfill operators. In particular, the ESA fears that significant losses in landfill capacity will result from the EA's presumption against separating old area from new areas by constructing a three dimensional boundary.

In addition, the Agency requirement for a step change in the way landfill gas is managed may deter the recovery of energy from landfill gas and cause a reversion to flaring.

<b>Papermakers face water issues</b>

Under the Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations (PPC) introduced in 2000, revised and more detailed permits were required for all papermakers. 'It has cost the industry some £4m to obtain the required permits, excluding the escalating costs arising from the management time needed to arrange the detailed monitoring and reporting procedures,' says Kathy Bradley, director of external affairs for the Confederation on Paper Industries.

The CPI supports the principles of Best Available Techniques, Bradley says, but she points out that interpretation on a site-by-site basis can give misleading results. 'These issues need to be handled at sector level to ensure interpretation is feasible in practice,' she comments. For example, she says, mills 'borrow' substantial quantities of water for steam-raising and process use. There is also water in the fibrous raw materials, and quite often more water is returned than was borrowed. Several mills discharge this water to the sewage treatment companies that deal with domestic sewage. This is welcomed by those companies because it reduces their need to pump water from other sources. Under the PPC 'site ring fencing' proposal, paper mills would have to reduce water consumption and sewage treatment sites would have to open new water sources.

Water is used a number of times before it is discharged, but one of the reasons for the quantity of water used is that contaminants build up in the water system during re-use. The focus on reducing water consumption could require more intensive chemical treatment. 'In this situation,' Bradley says, 'it would appear to be environmentally sensible not to minimise water use to BAT theoretical levels, as this will increase the overall risk.'

The UK paper industry has become increasingly frustrated over the lack of cohesion of national environmental policy. According to Bradley, 'the government's credibility will be jeopardised if, in practice, measures it introduces worsen rather than improve environmental performance.'

The view of the government is quite different. According to research from Envirowise, the DTI- and DEFRA-sponsored organisation that provides advice on environmental compliance, the paper and board industry consumes some 220 million litres of water to manufacture 6.6 million tonnes of air-dried paper and board at a cost of supply of £12.8 million. Yet by reducing total water and effluent costs by 20%, it says, many mills could be saving £1 per tonne of product.

Poor control of non-fibrous materials is also costing the industry millions, Envirowise claims. While it notes that paper and board mills in the UK make major efforts to recover and re-use waste fibre from the papermaking process, they tend to give lower priority to controlling the significant amounts of non-fibrous materials used by the industry. A 1% reduction in the use of non-fibrous materials would save the UK paper industry £4million/year in direct costs alone, it says - costs that are estimated to be at least £5/tonne of paper produced.

Envirowise has helped many mills to introduce Environmental Management Systems (EMS) which, it says, provides competitive advantage while also contributing to IPPC compliance.

With subsistence charges for some IPPC processes now based on the EA's Environmental Protection Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (EPOPRA) the benefits of having an EMS in place now include a reduced OPRA score on which application and subsistence charges are based. This is because an EMS demonstrates improved ability of the operator to manage the operations.

<b>Regulations provide food for thought</b>

Limited time and resources combined with increasing legislation mean that many of the UK's smaller food manufacturers are struggling to meet environmental obligations, writes Charlotte Turnbull of Envirowise.

Businesses that fail to comply with the regulations could be missing out on real commercial benefits as well as risking costly prosecution.

It is estimated that food and drink manufacturers produce 7-8million tonnes of waste each year, second only to the construction industry. The sector also consumes some 900 megalitres of water each day - enough to supply almost three-quarters of London's daily domestic consumption.

Despite this, recent environmental research indicates that many smaller firms, particularly some in specific food and drink sectors which will be subject to IPPC, have a low awareness of the environmental legislation affecting their businesses. Food and drink premises falling under IPPC are due to submit their applications either 1 June - 31 August 2004 or 1 January - 31 March 2005.

Although IPPC is mainly relevant to larger sites of specified activities within the food and drink sector (for example, processing of more than 200 tonnes/day of milk), some ancillary activities, such as boilers, may also be sufficiently large to mean that some sites are subject to IPPC through another section of the regulations. Companies should check whether they fall under IPPC by reference to the PPC regulations or alternatively via the NetRegs website, http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/netregs/.

NetRegs is an online resource that has been developed by the UK's environmental regulators to help meet the demand for information on environmental legislation. The website contains guidelines to help smaller food and drink manufacturers navigate the legislation affecting their activities.

The new guidelines are essential reading for small businesses involved in the processing and preserving of all types of food and drink, from the receipt of raw materials to storage of the final product. 'Our latest research shows that many food manufacturers would welcome more help when it comes to understanding their environmental obligations,' says Tim Fanshawe, NetRegs programme coordinator.

'For food and drink companies, the true cost of waste generated is estimated to be between 4-5% of turnover, according to the Envirowise business advice programme. By implementing environmental best practice measures, businesses can save themselves money and improve their competitive edge,' Fanshawe says.