Lesson 3 – Key elements of Industrial Elements Directive (IED)

Welcome to the lesson on the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), developed by the European Union to prevent and control industrial emissions. In this course, we will cover the general framework of integrated permitting, which is the basis of the IED, and its key elements.

The IED aims to prevent pollution from being transferred from one environment medium to another. To achieve this, permits must consider a plant’s entire environmental performance. The earlier pieces of legislation regarding industrial emissions were reformed in the IED, which lays down regulations to ensure the efficient use of resources and avoid the generation of waste from large industrial installations.

The key elements of the IED include the application of the best available techniques (BATs) to prevent and control industrial emissions, efficient use of energy and other resources, waste disposal, accident prevention and minimization, and regular environmental inspections. Installations cannot operate without an integrated permit, and permit conditions are set in accordance with BAT conclusions adopted by the Commission. Emission limit values are set to ensure pollutant emissions do not exceed the levels associated with BATs. Regular environmental inspections of the installations are required by the competent authorities, and permitting is subject to public participation.

The IED also sets EU-wide emission limit values for certain pollutants associated with certain activities. A process of information exchange is undertaken by the European Commission to define BAT and BAT-associated environmental performance levels at EU level with experts from Member States, industry, environmental NGOs, and services of the Commission. Documents containing BAT reference information (BREFs) are produced during this process, and EU law recognizes the BAT conclusions contained in BREFs as Implementing Decisions adopted by the Commission.

Using the IED, IPPC installations must be issued national permits containing emission limits based on BAT. It may be more effective to control pollution in air, water, and soil collectively than to control pollution in any one environment medium separately. The IED provides an integrated approach to these activities, bringing environmental performance requirements for industrial installations into alignment to create a level playing field in the European Union.

Pollutants to which the policy applies are separately settled for emissions to air, for emissions to water. In Annex II of the IED, substances are listed as air and water pollutants. Due to the lack of explicit mention of pollutants in Annex II of the IED, some boxes are not checked. IED may apply to them, however, if they exhibit certain characteristics or contain certain components, or if they are emitted in significant quantities, based on the fact that they can be transferred between environments.

For each sector, TWG members identify key environmental issues for determining or updating BAT conclusions as described in the BREF guidance. The sectors to which the policy applies are energy, production and processing of metals, mineral industry, chemical industry, wastewater management, paper and wood production and processing, intensive livestock production and aquaculture, animal and vegetable products from the food and beverage sector, and other activities.

In terms of preventing and controlling industrial emissions, the IED represents a technology-based approach. Best available techniques (BAT) make up an important part of the IED. As a reference for setting the permit conditions, the European Commission has adopted BAT conclusions, including BAT and BAT associated performance levels. It is important to understand that the IED creates a very important relationship between permit conditions and emission limit values and environmental quality standards. In article 18, the following is stated: “In case an environmental quality standard requires conditions that are harder to meet than those achievable through the best available technique,” additional measures may be included in the permit, without prejudice to any other measures that may be taken to comply with the standard. In this way, the IED entails a mandatory use.

We hope that by the end of this course, you will have a good understanding of the IED