Consultation on modernising environmental permitting for industry

While reviewing the permitting system for industry, we have looked at permitting approaches in other countries to identify novel approaches which could be used in the UK. One such approach are the various types of ‘flexible’ permit that have been used as part of the industrial pollution control system in the USA, for example through Plantwide Applicability Limit (PAL) permits. These approaches move away from setting emission limits for each separate technology or process at an industrial facility and instead set an overall cap for the facilities’ emissions of certain pollutants (for example, particulate matter or nitrogen oxides).  

A version of this approach is already used in the UK called the ‘bubble’ approach, as described in the refineries EU BAT reference document (BRef). 

The key benefits of ‘flexible’ permits are: 

• reduced bureaucracy – as operators do not need to obtain a permit modification for every significant change they make to their facility, as long as they stay below the overall cap for a particular pollutant 

• cost reduction – the cost of reducing a particular pollutant from different processes or technologies within a facility is not equal, so these approaches give operators flexibility to reduce emissions in the least cost way, as long as they stay below the overall cap 

• potential emissions reduction – the cap is generally established by adding together the relevant process or technology specific emission limits for a particular pollutant from a facility, however some flexible permit approaches in the USA then subtract 10% from the sum of the process specific emission limits to ensure that the system delivers emissions reductions as well as greater flexibility to operators 

The emission cap could be revised down in line with any new BAT conclusions that were issued for a sector, which would ensure emissions are reduced in line with BAT. 

Approaches of this sort generally work best for larger industrial facilities with a large number of point sources, as the flexibility will provide greater value. They also generally work best for high-volume, relatively uniform pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, ammonia and particulate matter. For less uniform pollutants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), there is a risk that less harmful VOCs are reduced to provide more headroom to emit more harmful VOCs. 

These approaches could also provide value in simplifying permitting for facilities that are decarbonising through the use of new fuels. For example, an installation with a flexible permit that is switching from natural gas to hydrogen would not require a permit variation if it could demonstrate that the change would not lead to exceedances of the NOx emissions cap for the site and would not lead to wider emissions or environmental impacts that were not covered by the flexible permit. 

Significant further policy development would be required on this proposal. In helping us to decide whether approaches of this sort should be considered further, we are interested in views from respondents on whether such an approach would provide significant benefits (of the types listed above) in comparison to the existing regulatory framework and the existing flexibilities used by regulators.