The transition to IED permits and how to deal with substantial change at a permitted facility

Project description and aims

On 6 January 2011 the Industrial Emissions Directive entered into force, and its provisions listed in Article 80(1) have to be transposed into national law within two years. Under the IED it is possible that for many industrial sectors reviews of existing permits will be required in order to address the requirements of the BAT Conclusions in the relevant BREF (Article 3(11) and 3(12)). Under existing Directives, Member States implement various systems to deal with changes taking place at facilities. These changes are made to permits in various formats and guises including agreed changes to Permits, variations to Permits, Technical Amendments to Permits and so on. Article 20 of the IED deals with changes by operators to installations and Article 63 deals with Substantial Change to existing installations. These provisions will require a new approach by Member States in how to decide if a full review of a Permit is required or is a more informal change approval system is adopted.

This project organised an exercise for Member States which focused on the changing requirements for the development of Permits under the new provision of the IED. The key questions were:

• “How will IED Permits differ from the types of permits currently being prepared by Member State Regulators?” (under IPPC, LCP, WID, etc), and
• “How are we to deal with substantial changes to permitted facilities”?

The project report outlines the outcomes of the discussions and lists recommendations for Member States and IMPEL.