The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive

In the Autumn of 2005, during the preparatory work by DG Environment to revise the current Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive, CONCAWE published the results of a small but important study examining the consequences of a departure from the concept of a ‘local BAT’ approach to a common Europe-wide concept of BAT.

The concept of ‘local BAT’ (i.e. a BAT that accounts for the specifics of a given plant and its impact on human health/the environment) is an integral part of the existing IPPC Directive and is at the heart of the optimised cost-effective design of the Commission’s Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution (TSAP). A significant finding of the study was that, for the same environmental goal in the EU as a whole, the overall cost of meeting the TSAP ambition for reduced exposure to fine particulates would double as a result of a move away from the local BAT concept to a rigid, common EU-wide BAT.

The study also highlighted the fact that for some individual Member States, the cost burden could increase sevenfold or more.