Solvent Emissions (Scotland) Regulations 2004: guidance

Guidance on the Solvent Emissions (Scotland) Regulations 2004

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Scope of the Document

This document is issued by the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and operators as guidance on implementation of the Solvent Emissions Directive (Council Directive 1999/13/EC "on the limitation of emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) due to the use of organic solvents in certain activities and installations", the SED).

The guidance gives an overview of the current UK regulatory regimes, identifies the application procedure and summarises the main technical requirements of the SED.

1.2 Regulatory Overview

The Solvent Emissions Directive was fully transposed into Scots law on 28 January 2004 when the "Solvent Emissions (Scotland) Regulations 2004" (SER 2004) came into force.

As transposition of the SED was delayed from the 1 April 2001 deadline required by the European Commission transitional arrangements have had to be included in SER 2004 for both application and compliance arrangements.

The SER 2004 amends the existing regulatory regimes of Local Air Pollution Control (LAPC), Integrated Pollution Control (IPC), and Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) to designate SED listed activities as prescribed processes or activities for control under these existing regimes. In this way SER 2004 requires that SEPA include such necessary conditions in authorisations / permits to deliver the technical requirements of the SED.

The SED sets minimum technical standards, which may well be superseded by the underlying requirement for operators to apply BATNEEC (Best Available Techniques Not Entailing Excessive Cost) or BAT (Best Available Techniques) for LAPC / IPC or PPC respectively.

The provision of this guidance to SEPA and operators is intended to secure consistent interpretation of the SED requirements and contribute to the effective regulation of activities using VOCs.

Additional technical guidance has been issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Devolved Administrations which identifies the technical compliance requirements for each specific industrial sector which falls within the scope of the SED. This guidance can be viewed via the following web link :
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/airquality/lapc/pgnotes/default.htm