Consultation on the implementation of the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) Regulation and the UN-ECE Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers
Since 2001, the European Commission has collected data on mass emissions from all Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive installations, and published a collation and analysis of the data in the form of the European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER). The purpose is to make available information for the public and regulators, and to have data for assessing compliance with EU and international obligations.
Under this system, the UK provided the necessary emissions data through the pollution inventories for England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) regulated offshore oil and gas installations, as well as estimations made by the Defra on behalf of local authority regulated IPPC installations in England and Wales.
For the reporting year 2007 onwards, the EPER is replaced by the E-PRTR Regulation, and with this transition comes a number of new reporting requirements. Most notably, data is required for several new industry sectors that fall outside the scope of the UK’s existing pollution inventories.
At the same time, as a signatory state to the PRTR Protocol, the UK is required to establish a national PRTR, as opposed to the separate inventories that currently exist.
This consultation document sets out and seeks views on proposals for extending the UK’s current PRTR capabilities in these and other ways. It does not however address the implementation of the E-PRTR Regulation in Scotland. This will be consulted on separately by the Scottish Executive. It is expected that the two consultations will run in parallel.
Responses should be received no later than Wednesday, 24 October 2007.
Page last modified: 6 May 2008
Page published: 1 August 2007