Industrial Emissions Directive: concerns over parliament rapporteur’s attempts to severely undermine flexibility measures proposed by council for existing large combustion plants, EURELECTRIC
Release Date: 2010-04-20
EURELECTRIC repeats its support for the flexibility measures introduced by Council to ease the transition towards implementing the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) for existing Large Combustion Plants (LCPs) after 2016. This is crucial for Europe’s security of supply but also to avoid carbon lock-in that large investment in gas capacity – resulting from the brutal application of the Directive to the oldest plants – would provoke. The European electricity industry is therefore extremely concerned by the fact that Mr Holger Krahmer, European Parliament’s rapporteur for this Directive, has proposed to delete two of the most crucial flexibility mechanisms, i.e. the Transitional National Plan (article 32) and the Limited Lifetime Derogation (article 33). Other currently discussed ideas to reduce the duration of these mechanisms would also severely impair their effectiveness and should not be accepted.It is crucial that flexibility mechanisms are made available to Member States and operators in order to progressively introduce the new emission limit values set in Annex V of the proposed IED for existing plants. Transition mechanisms are essential to avert the risks associated with the original Commission’s proposal for security of supply, carbon lock-in and electricity price increases, in particular in those Member States that are largely relying on fossil fuels in their national energy mix and for power companies that have already heavily invested to meet the requirements of the current legislative framework.
The European power sector is committed to delivering a high level of environmental protection. While electricity generation increased by 75% between 1980 and 2007 in the EU-27, electricity related SO2 and NOx emissions reduced respectively by 76% and 57% in the same period. The continued implementation of the existing legislation (including IPPC and LCP Directives as well as EU ETS) will further reduce the emissions of air pollutants to reach very low levels. Against this background, a gradual implementation of the proposed Annex V to existing LCPs would suffice to deliver further environmental benefits while limiting the risks for security of supply.
EURELECTRIC also wants to draw attention to the fact that the so-called European Safety Net (ESN), whose aim is to introduce EU-wide minimum requirements for all industry sectors, should not be applied to the power sector. This would constitute undue “double regulation” in addition to the emission limit values defined in Annex V. Importantly also, to ensure regulatory stability, Annex V should only be amended through ordinary legislative procedure and not comitology.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | EURELECTRIC |
| Country: | Belgium |