Comments on the EU Commission's revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive
The European Commission announced in its "The Green Deal" that the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) should fully address issues related to climate, energy and circular economy. But the IED is neither the main legislation for greenhouse gases nor for circular economy, although it contributes directly or indirectly to both. Instead of making major revisions to the directive, Jernkontoret believes it is better to update the guide on how the directive's reference documents with requirements related to best available technology (BAT) is produced in Seville.
Comments to the European Commission
(sent via "Have your say on EU policies")
Jernkontoret's d-nr: 20/24
General messages
- There is a significant EU added value elaborating sector BREF in the Seville process. An improved Seville process will be able to both contribute to circular economy and to interact with decarbonization of industry and major changes in IED may not be necessary.
- Legal certainty should be ensured throughout the revision process, and no new BREF review cycle in Seville should be initiated until a revised IED enters into force, and the ongoing BREF-revisions must remain as IED 2010 permits.
- Due to the corona crises, many employees work less hours and focus time on essential issues. This, in combination with a unexpected timetable for this process, limit the possibility reply. To make a new legislative proposal linked to the IIA before the evaluation report and the Staff Working Document is published in combination with Corona crises, is not satisfactory. Please, for next steps, provide transparent timetable and generous reply times.
BAU and Sectoral issues
Many BREFs are not yet reviewed or implemented, so IED's full performance is yet unknown. If including installations below thresholds (or new activities) it's important to assess benefits (environmental) with the increased workload for all stakeholders (economics) but also possible delaying updates of other BREFs (environmental).
BREF process
It is important with collection of robust, reliable and representative data for environmental performances, and for the identified key environmental issues for a sector. The BREF guidance should be updated and include the criteria for Key Environmental Issus (KEI), a transparent derivation methodology for the setting of BAT-AE(P)Ls and guidance on circular economy.
Access to information
When improving access to information, participation in decision-making and access to justice it is needed to also comply with CBI and competition rules.
Contribution to the CE
IED may accomplish to CE but is not the main tool, as IED is for processes in an installation. BAT should always be assessed for the specific sector concerned, keeping the integrated approach in mind. In CAEP – IED is one of 35 actions – with industrial symbiosis as a separate action point. For steel sector, having many different BREFs, they all contribute to CE via e.g. waste management, material efficiency as BATAEPLs, use of by-products, recovery and recycling. With a new BATC, waste amount (sludge/dust) often even increase with better techniques. Parallel with the production of steel, by-products and waste are produced (e.g. slags, dust). For utilization of these the main legislation is Waste Framework Directive (WFD), but for obvious reasons, it is not possible to have targets for industrial waste minimization in WFD.
Interaction with decarbonization of industry
With regards to decarbonization efforts, IED Article 9.1 has ensured – and should continue to ensure and retain the coherence of IED with ETS legislation. In order to support the deployment of novel techniques, IED Article 15(5) could be used more frequently and for longer periods. IIA assumed that decarbonization can be achieved with an improvement in all other environmental aspects. We already know from Swedish steel industry's Climate Roadmap that the demand electricity will increase, but changes for other emissions by the transformation are not fully known.
Coherence with other legislation
The IED has a strong coherence with other environmental policy areas. The subject matter in IED is to address emissions into air, water and land and waste generation from processes, in order to achieve a high level of protection of the environment taken as a whole. This should continue to be pursued. Emissions to water are mentioned in IIA and Water framework directive is the main legislation and overlaps should be avoided. When assessing priority substances for a certain sector, the four criteria for KEI must be used.
Jernkontoret
Bo-Erik Pers, CEO
Eva Blixt, Senior Advisor
