The Council approved a revised Directive on Industrial Emissions so as to reduce emissions of pollutants that are harmful to the environment & associated with cancer, asthma & acid rain. The Directive seeks to prevent & control air, water & soil pollution by industrial installations (former IPPC Directive). It regulates emissions of a wide range of pollutants, including sulphur & nitrogen compounds, dust particles, asbestos & heavy metals. The Directive is aimed at improving local air, water & soil quality, not at mitigating global warming effects of some of these substances. Currently, around 52,000 installations are covered by this Act in sectors like metal production, chemical manufacture, poultry & pig farming, waste incineration & fuel combustion in large installations. The review integrates 7 Directives into a single legal framework so as to reduce administrative burdens, providing for a more harmonised & rigorous implementation of emissions limits associated with the cleanest available technology across the EU. Deviations from this standard are only permitted where local & technical characteristics would make it disproportionately costly. Key parts of the necessary technical documents ("BAT conclusions") will be available in all official EU languages. The recast also tightens emission limits for nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and dust from power plants and large combustion installations in oil refineries and the metal industry. At the request of the Council, new plants must apply the cleanest available technology from 2012, four years earlier than initially proposed. Existing plants have to comply with this standard from 2016, though a transition period is foreseen: til 30 June 2020, Member States may define transitional plans with declining annual caps for NOx, SO2 or dust emissions. Where installations are already scheduled to close by the end of 2023 or operate less than 17,500 hours after 2016, they may not need to upgrade. The revised directive will enter into force shortly after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU and must be transposed into national law.
