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Environmental Policies Assessment and Management: the Case of Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive in the Waste Sector
Published:
30 October 2012
by MDPI
in The 2nd World Sustainability Forum
session Sustainable Development Policy and Practice
Abstract: The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive has been for the first time published in 1996 (Council Directive 96/61/EC). It was amended in 2008 and now it has been replaced by the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) n.75/2010. The IPPC Directive represents one of the main important policy tool of European Union to manage the emissions of industrial activities and to achieve a higher level of protection of environment as a whole. The Directive asks to the Competent Authorities to issue an unique permit for the industrial installations where are included limits, monitoring frequencies and operational requirements referred to all environmental aspects (water emissions, air emissions, soil, etc.) In literature we can find several studies about policies assessment. In this framework we can observe that not so many authors have studied the IPPC Directive. In addition the papers related to the assessment of the IPPC Directive are referred mainly to discuss about the effectiveness of the Directive in the implementation of Best Available Techniques (BAT) and the improvement of environmental performance of the companies in the scope of the Directive. Besides the few papers or technical reports focused on the implementation of the IPPC Directive from a legislative and administrative perspective have never studied in depth the contents of the issued permits. The objective of our paper is to bridge this gap presenting the results of an empirical research carried out by the authors in the framework of an European project named MED IPPC NET. The authors investigated 62 IPPC permits of landfill sector issued in seven European Regions: Andalusia and Valencia (Spain), Tuscany, Piedmont and Sicily (Italy), West Macedonia (Greece) and Slovenia. The research aimed to identify the differences in the Emissions Limit Values, monitoring frequencies, operational requirements imposed to installations of the same sector but with permits issued in different Competent Authorities. The results demonstrate relevant disparities not always justifiable by the flexibility given by the Directive to the Member States and Competent Authorities to implement the Directive.
Keywords: IPPC Directive, environmental policies, landfill sector