In December 2007, the Commission adopted a package of measures to further reduce emissions from industrial installations. It adopted a proposal for a Directive on industrial emissions (integrated pollution prevention and control) which recasts seven existing Directives. The Commission proposal will merge the Directive concerning integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC Directive) with other directives into a single new industrial emissions directive, including three directives on the production of titanium dioxide, the VOC Solvents Directive, the Waste Incineration Directive, and the Directive on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from large combustion plants (LCP Directive).

Under the Commission’s proposal about 52,000 industrial plants, in the EU, will be required to meet new minimum emissions standards on several pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and dust.

The Commission has proposed to extend the scope of the IPPC Directive to include medium-sized combustion installations generating between 20 and 50 MW and activities such as the preservation of wood and wood products and the production of wood panels.

The IPPC Directive whose aim is to prevent and control industrial emissions to air, water, and soil, introduced a permit system aimed at ensuring that operators of industrial installations adopt preventive measures against pollution.

The Directive addressed industrial installations with a high pollution potential such as metal, chemicals and paper industries, oil refineries and poultry farms. Hence, operators of industrial installations in the EU are required to submit an application to an environmental permit to the competent authorities in the EU Member States. Such permits are based on Best Available Techniques (BATs), which are decide at EU level, and include defined limit values for atmospheric pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and dust. Industrial installations may only operate if the operator holds a permit which is only granted if requirements for the protection of air, water and soil, waste minimisation are met. Such permit should include all the necessary measures to achieve a high level protection for the environment.

The Commission adopts reference documents for the best available techniques (BREFs) which should be the reference for setting permit conditions. According to the Commission there are considerable shortcomings in the implementation of best available techniques. The Commission attributes this to the BAT’s unclear provisions in the existing legislation as well as to the flexibility left for competent authorities to deviate from it in the permitting process.

Under the present directive, the Member States’s competent authorities have some flexibility. They are allowed to take into account technical characteristics of the installation in question as well as its geographical location when granting permits. However, the Commission proposal has not preserved this flexibility. According to the Commission “(…) permits issued for implementing the IPPC Directive often include conditions that are not based on BAT as described in the BREFs with little, if any, justification for such deviation.” Hence, the Commission has proposed to introduce provisions strengthening the use of BAT. The Commission proposal requires that BAT reference documents must serve as the reference for establishing permit conditions. Moreover, it would be also required that emission limit values do not exceed the emission levels related with the best available techniques as defined in those BAT reference documents.

The Commission is making the BAT reference documents legally binding. Member States therefore would no longer be allowed to concede flexibility to certain installations taking into account their location. Under the draft proposal, installations would only be able to deviate from the use of BATs under precise conditions.

Under the draft proposal the competent authorities may grant derogations to allow emission limit values to exceed the emission levels associated with the best available techniques as described in the BAT reference documents, to take into account certain specific circumstances. However, they must be based in specific criteria and should not exceed the emission limit values set out for combustion plants, for waste incineration plants and waste co-incineration plants.

According to the Commission the existing provisions on compliance, reporting, inspections and permit reviews are not clear. Hence, in order to ensure an effective implementation and enforcement of this Directive, the Commission has proposed new provisions under which operators would be required to regularly report on compliance with permit conditions to the competent authority. The draft proposal requires that the competent authority should be notified of any planned change to an installation which might affect the environment. Moreover, the permit should be reconsidered in order to ensure that the installations concerned continue to meet the requirements of this Directive.

The proposal also introduces a requirement for permit conditions be reconsidered and, where necessary, updated, particularly where the Commission adopts a new or updated BAT reference document. Moreover, Member States would be required to provide for a system of environmental inspections.

The Commission has also proposed a new requirement to monitor periodically the soil and groundwater on the site of the installations.

The Commission has proposed to tighten up the minimum emission values for large combustion plants, aligned with best available techniques, for certain polluting substances.

The draft proposal maintains and sets strict operational conditions, technical requirements and emission limit values for plants incinerating or co-incinerating waste within the Community and also introduces more strict emission limit values for installations producing titanium dioxide, aligned with best available techniques, for certain polluting substances.

The Commission will have the power to adopt, through the untransparent comitology procedure, the criteria for granting derogations from the emission levels associated with the best available techniques as described in the BAT reference documents and for determining the frequency of periodic monitoring and of the content of the baseline report as well as to adapt non-essential minimum requirements to scientific and technical progress. The Commission on the basis of best available techniques will adapt the Annexes to scientific and technical progress through the comitology procedure – the regulatory procedure with scrutiny.

Obviously, the Commission proposal intending to strengthen up emissions rules for industrial installations was not welcomed by business as they believe that it may force power stations as well as other plants to close down. The Commission plans entail excessive costs to industry. According to BusinessEurope "These directives will impose a disproportionate cost on industry, leading to production cuts in Europe rather than to further innovation and investment in clean technologies.”

On 10 March, the European Parliament adopted, in first reading, with 402 votes in favour, 189 against and 54 abstentions the draft Directive on integrated pollution prevention and control, with amendments. The European Parliament has backed the Commission’s proposal to impose more strict emission limit values for certain categories of combustion plants and for pollutants such as SO2, Nox and dust. However, the MEPs have proposed to change the procedure for establishing these limits to “improve flexibility.”

The MEPs have voted to reduce the industries recourse to exemptions. The European Parliament has proposed that the Commission shall, within 12 months of the publication of a BAT reference document, set emission limit values as well as monitoring and compliance requirements as minimum requirements. The European Parliament in order to restrain the widespread recourse to exemptions, has therefore proposed that the Commission use the comitology procedure to set legally binding new minimum emission limit values for pollutants such as SO2, N0x and dust that no installation can exceed. Holger Krahmer, the rapporteur, has said that these requirements will "form a European safety network whose rules may not be breached by any installation.”

According to the MEPs emission limits laid down for individual installations must be based on best available techniques, but they should take into account local circumstances.

The European Parliament has backed the Commission proposal to include within the scope of the directive medium-sized combustion plants (between 20 and 50 MW) however the MEPs voted for installations with less than 50 MW which operate for no more than 500 hours /year to be excluded.

Caroline Jackson, Conservative member of the European Parliament's environment committee, has drawn attention that under the Commission proposal hospital reserve boilers fall within the scope of the directive. Hence, under the draft directive hospital spare boilers would be assed by their potential but not actual emissions. Consequently, hospitals would face considerable costs in order to get a permit. The European Parliament has adopted Caroline Jackson’s amendment to exempt reserve boilers. Thus the MEPs voted for the emissions from combustion plants used in hospitals to be calculated based on their normal running capacity. Caroline Jackson has said "NHS boilers should never have been put at risk by this directive. The commission is still failing to fully investigate the unintended consequences some of their proposals can have before it brings them forward.”

The Conservative MEP has also tabled an amendment to ensure that power stations unable to reach the new emissions limits will still be able to operate for no more than 20,000 hours from 2016 to 2023. However, the amendment was rejected. The Caroline Jackson is concerned that under the proposal several stand-by generation facilities will not be economically viable in 2016 which will result in blackouts.

The Commission has proposed to extend the directive scope as regards intensive rearing of poultry and to differentiate between different poultry species. The European Parliament has voted for the directive to cover solely industries with 40 000 places for poultry which is the case under the existing directive.

According to the rapporteur the Commission’s proposal as regards poultry would have been too bureaucratic. Nevertheless, according to Neil Parish an amendment to change the way in which nitrogen excretion equivalent rates is calculated was rejected therefore £25,000 would be added to the costs of a permit for pig farmers. He said "Pig and poultry farms already comply with detailed European environmental law and their standards would put many other European producers to shame. To bring farmers into a law designed to scale back emissions from large industry is unacceptable."

The Environment Council has been debating the Commission’s draft proposal. The majority of member states are in favour of reinforcing the role of the reference documents (BREFs) relating to the best available techniques (BAT). Member States are concerned that the Commission proposal will make the reference documents legally binding, particularly for emission limit values, which would not be compatible with their adoption process.

Several Member States insisted on the need to take local conditions into account.

Moreover, the majority of the Member States stressed that the Commission has left too many aspects to comitology and they would prefer such aspects to be specified in the Directive, or for the subsidiarity principle to be applied.

Although most Member States agree that it is important to strengthen the monitoring and inspection procedures as well as to re-examine permits following the publication of a new or revised reference document, they believe that the re-examination timetable, the frequency of inspections and the reporting procedures should be clarified. According to the Minister for Climate Change, Biodiversity and Waste at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Joan Ruddock, “the Government is seeking to secure a commitment to the development of clear Community guidance on how these requirements would be related to the environmental risk involved, so that the burden placed on regulators and operators would be proportionate.”

The ministers also debated the date of implementation of new provisions for large combustion plants. The Commission has proposed to bring emissions of existing large combustion plants (including power plants) into line with current BAT by 2016 whereas several member states, including the UK, are requesting 2020. Those member states have asked how already established plants would be able to adapt by 2016. They stressed the considerable costs of modifying existing installations and expressed concerns about the security of energy supply. Joan Ruddock, has said, to the European Scrutiny Committee, that the UK Government is concerned that “the details of the minimum requirements for large combustion plants could have "troubling" consequences for the future development of replacement power plants consistent with achieving carbon reduction objectives (…).”

The Environment Council has also discussed the European Parliament proposal on the introduction of minimum requirements for further activities covered by the proposed directive, but not yet subject to such obligations. The majority of the Member States are not in favour of such idea. Several member States stressed that “As minimum requirements would represent higher emissions levels than BAT, the introduction of further minimum requirements could in fact increase divergence from BAT in permits.” In general, Member States are concerned that the introduction of further minimum requirements could increase the administrative burden.

Several Member States rejected extending the directive to smaller combustion plants with capacity of 20 MW to 50 MW. The Member States recalled that such installations are already covered by other legislative texts. According to the Commission its plans could bring health and environmental benefits of up to €1.6bn however several member states do not agree with the Commission's view that the costs would justify the benefits of extending the scope of the directive to include combustion plants with a rated thermal input between 20 and 50 MW.

It should be recalled that last July, the European Commission launched proceedings in the Court of Justice against the UK. According to the Commission the coal-fired power plant at Lynemouth in Northumberland constitutes a combustion plant within the meaning of the large combustion plant directive (LCPD) which is aiming at reducing acidification, ground-level ozone and particles, by controlling emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and dust from large combustion plants. Combustion plans must meet the emission limit values provided in the LCPD. The Commission has argued that under the LCPD directive Member States were required by 1 January 2008 at the latest, to achieve significant emission reductions by taking appropriate measures to ensure that all licences for the operation of existing plants contain conditions relating to compliance with the emission limit values laid down in the directive. According to the Commission, the UK has acted in breach of that directive by failing to apply the directive to the Lynemouth power plant which constitutes a continuing breach of Community law. According to the Government, the Lynemouth power plant is excluded from the Large Combustion Plant Directive. If the ECJ finds that the UK has infringed Community law it will require the UK to take the measures necessary to conform and may impose a financial penalty. Therefore, the power station may have to shut down.

According to a document entitled "UK Concerns on the Proposed Recast Industrial Emissions (IPPC) Directives Provisions Concerning Large Combustion Plants”, seen by the Guardian, the UK Government is seriously concerned that the Commission proposal imposing tough new emission limits on power plants. According to the document electricity prices may increase by 20% and the security of the UK's electricity supply would be at risk if the proposed legislation is not amended. According to the Guardian “Whitehall says that up to a further 8GW of generating capacity may close if the proposed tougher rules in the IPPC directive are applied – meaning that in 2015 around a quarter of capacity would shut at the same time.” The paper also pointed out that it is quite impossible to build and operate by the end of 2015 replacement plants.

The European Parliament position differs from those of both the Commission and the member states. It remains to be seen what will come out from the closed-doors ‘trialogue’ legislative negotiations. The ludicrous situation is that the Government cannot guarantee Britain's energy security. The Government will try to reduce the impact of the Directive on industrial emissions but it cannot veto the proposal. Moreover, it would not be able to change the current EU laws, in fact, it is obliged to apply them otherwise it will be taken again to the ECJ. Consequently, Britain is facing the threat of power stations not being able to operate because of the EU legislation which is likely to lead to power cuts.