1. Chemical industry environmental spending to be increased as soon as on Jan 1, 2015

    2 September, 2014

    The Russian Chemists Union (RCU) has made an appeal to the country’s Minister of Industry and Trade regarding a higher environmental spending burden due to be placed on chemical companies starting from 2015. The matter concerns a bill currently being prepared for its second reading and titled “On introducing amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Environmental Protection’ and to certain other legislative acts of the Russian Federation.” The whole legislative amendment project has as its aim the transition of the environmental regulatory framework to the best available technology (BAT) principle in the years of 2019-2025.

    “The envisioned adoption of new standards will entail costly procedures in which the sources that emit, discharge, or stockpile pollutants will be re-registered, permit papers reissued, continuous automated environmental monitoring systems installed, and so on,” pointed out RCU’s President Viktor Ivanov, the author of the letter.

    The draft law also calls for the introduction of a multiplying coefficient increasing the current environment protection payments by a factor of 100, and what’s more, the increase is due to take place at the moment the new standards come into force, that is, on 1 January 2015.

    The multiplying coefficient of 100 is due to be applied to a subject caught at non-compliance with the permissible discharge or emission levels just six months after the expiration of the deadlines set out in the subject’s Environment Efficiency Improvement Program (EEIP). Having an EEIP, in its turn, would be necessary to a subject wishing to extend the term of action of its current (pre-amendment) environmental permits. In such a manner, industrial companies will see their environmental payments significantly increase as soon as in 2015-2018, that is, before the planned transition to a BAT-guided regulatory framework.

    Comments are closed.

Sponsors

  • Support: