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DEVELOPMENT OF REFERENCE BOOKS ON BEST AVAILABLE TECHNIQUES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Dmitry Skobelev

Abstract

The EU Reference Books of Best Available Techniques and the RF Information and Technical Books on Best Available Technologies (Techniques) are technical documents presenting factual technical, environmental and economic information, reflecting the outcomes of the information exchange under requirements of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive and the RF legislation in the field of environmental protection (namely ? in the area of Best Available Techniques (BAT) and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)) and standardisation. The main actors of the two BREF development processes are rather similar, and in both cases the role of the European IPPC Bureau and the Russian BAT Bureau is to co-ordinate the exchange of information and to ensure that information is collected and processed according to the guidance documents in order to draw up or to review the BREFs. For each BREF, the scientific staff of the European IPPC Bureau and researchers working at/with the Russian BAT Bureau lead the work of sector-oriented or inter-sectoral TWGs. The Russian BREFs are very similar to the EU ones both by their structure, contents, and criteria for selecting BATs and BAT-associated emission levels (BAT-AELs). Both in the EU and in the RF, chapters containing descriptions of BATs and BAT-AELs are the crucial elements of BREFs; in addition, BAT conclusions are published in the EU as Commission Implementing Decisions. The expert judgement remains the key principle of setting quantitative requirements to BAT-associated emission levels. To optimise the number of pollutants regulated and to attract attention to the most substantial ones, a concept of marker parameters has been developed and used for drawing up BREFs and setting BAT-AELs in Russia. Marker parameters are individual or integral parameters, characteristic of applied technological processes, reflecting peculiarities of these processes and significant for assessing production environmental performance and resource efficiency. They are selected using clear criteria and justified for each BREF/IPPC-regulated production process.

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