Consultation on modernising environmental permitting for industry

The development of GET by UK regulators has been successful in providing regulatory clarity and robust environmental standards for emerging technologies, such as carbon capture and green hydrogen production. GET is developed by the EA (alongside other UK regulators) using powers under the EPRs (which originate from provisions of Article 14(6) of the IED) to set permit conditions on the basis of their determination of BAT where specific sectoral BAT conclusions have not been published, or where BAT conclusions do not address all the potential environmental effects. 

While the process for developing GET is not explicitly set out in legislation, wider public sector requirements on consultation apply and the EA work closely with industry and experts on the development of GET and consult publicly on the final GET document. EA also works with devolved government regulators in developing GET and use the UK Regulators Group to agree UK-wide approaches where possible. 

While GET is an effective tool, it has primarily been used reactively and on a sector-by-sector basis in areas where permits are urgently required, rather than looking forward to identify sectors (or cross-sector technologies and techniques) where early development of standards could provide necessary clarity to industry as these sectors develop. It also does not apply to local authority regulated sectors, where many of the decarbonisation options (for example, hydrogen and carbon capture) are the same. Defra will work with DESNZ, EA and the devolved governments and regulators to identify where GET is likely to be required across industry in line with government net zero and circular economy ambitions. 

The EU’s recent revision of the IED also included measures to create a more central role for emerging techniques in the BAT system, for example, by emphasising the consideration of emerging techniques in sector BAT reviews and setting emission limit values associated with emerging techniques. There are also new measures to give existing operators 6 years to meet these emissions limits for emerging techniques rather than the standard 4 years through the BAT process. We believe that the existing GET process provides a more agile, timely and proportionate means of putting in place initial standards for emerging technologies than the UK BAT system. However, we would also like to gather views on the above EU changes in considering how emerging techniques could be better integrated into BAT processes to provide a more comprehensive and forward-looking system.