ESA is actively engaged with progress with the WGC BREF which held its kick off technical review meeting in Seville, Spain from 25th to 29th September.
The scope of the BREF had been subject to prior public feedback, which has been received from most European countries and some European agencies. The kick off meeting agreed 26 processes and has added, for the first time in a BREF, diffuse fugitive emissions (other than those planned to be flared or sent to flues).
This gave ESA a real opportunity to input technical sealing information and following a telephone consultation with senior members of the WGC working group, which was arranged by the Government Affairs Group, the ESA document on diffuse fugitive emissions has been accepted as a reference document. This means it has been loaded onto the Best Available Technology Information System (BATIS) for the WGC BREF. A first for ESA.
However, since the actions from the kick off meeting have been subject to review, many EU states and some representative organisations have pointed out crossover between the proposed WGC BREF and other existing BREFs for Chemical plants. These include: Large Volume Inorganic chemicals LVIC (AAF; and S); Large Volume Organic Chemicals LVOC; Polymers POL; and SIC BREFs.
A meeting of IED Article 13, held in Brussels on 19-20th December decided that there would be two BREFs – WGC and LVIC, and POL BREF is to be dropped. EIPPCB held a new meeting 14/15 March in Seville, which confirmed that there should be two chemical BREFs: WGC; LVIC only. Hydrofluoric Acid is to be removed from LVIC BREF.
We still need to finalise the ESA document on Fugitive Emissions Reduction as soon as possible.
David Mitchell, Standards and Legislation Director
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