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BEST AVAILABLE TECHNIQUES AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Marit Hjort

Abstract

The Best Available Techniques (BAT) concept first emerged in the 1960s. It primarily serves as a tool for preventing industrial pollution and setting conditions for Integrated Environmental Permits for larger industrial installations. BAT include technological, technical and managerial solutions aimed to prevent or control pollution and provide for high resource and energy efficiency (EE) of production processes and minimisation of waste. Lessons learnt by various countries prove that the BAT concept has potential for a much wider application, going beyond pollution prevention and control. This paper considers opportunities opened up by BAT with respect to achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). These opportunities form a ?BAT flower?, petals of which are discussed in the paper. Internationally, the BAT concept is becoming an effective environmental policy instrument, and is gradually strengthening its position in the development of industrial policy. Stringent BAT requirements do not jeopardise industrial development and economic growth, but help harmonising progress towards SDG 8: Sustainable Economic Growth. Smart application of BAT requires reduction of pollution and enhanced EE. This also provides for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions though regulatory instruments for climate change mitigation and industrial pollution often are separate, both at the national and international levels. BAT-based programmes for EE enhancement and GHG emissions reduction function in the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Canada, making BAT a powerful instrument for energy and climate policies used to achieve SDG 13: Climate Action. Circular economy entails gradually decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources, and designing waste out of the system. BAT require minimisation of waste in all technological processes and provides advice for replacing raw materials by waste in many industrial sectors (metallurgy, construction materials industry, energy generation, etc.). Thereby BAT contribute towards achieving SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production; in particular, through the reduction of releases of chemicals, BAT support target 12.4. Important results have been achieved within green chemistry due to the application of techniques reducing or eliminating the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products. Increasingly, countries apply green chemistry principles to identify BAT. Chemical products are used in all sectors of the economy; and are crucial for both industrial and rural development, protection of terrestrial ecosystems and prevention of soil degradation. Implementation of BAT is required by international and regional conventions, such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, the Minamata Convention of Mercury and the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic. This helps promote SDG 17: Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2019v/4.2/s06.025

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