Reading - as you do – the Protection o f the Environment Act 2003 (Commencement) Order 2004 published by the Stationery Office in Dublin, I noticed that Ireland is changing the technical basis of its waste management and licensing systems from BATNEEC to BAT. These two sets of initials are common parlance in pollution circles. BAT means ‘Best Available Technology while BATNEEC adds ‘Not Entailing Excessive Cost’.
The difference is critical. BATNEEC implies some sort of cost benefit weighting of the cost of treatment against the costs to the polluter of installing that treatment. This is the key point. By looking at things from the polluter perspective, it effectively allows them to offload some of their costs onto third parties – known as externalisation. I posted on some of the moral implications of externalising costs here
BAT, in theory at least, doesn’t do this. The polluter pays. I say in theory, because this paper suggests that the NEEC qualification is still effectively in place.
Since 1984, industrial air pollution regulation in the EU has been guided by the framework concept of Best Available Technology Not Entailing Excessive Costs (BATNEEC). This was introduced by the 1984 Air Framework Directive (AFD) and applies to air pollution from large industrial installations (CEC, 1984). In 1996, the AFD was replaced by the Integrated Pollution Prevention & Control (IPPC) Directive, which applies the framework concept of Best Available Techniques (BAT) to the integrated control of pollution to all three media (CEC, 1996). Despite the absence of the NEEC qualification, the concept of avoiding excessive costs is effectively absorbed in the IPPC definition of availability (Skea & Smith, 1997).
Of course it was never so simple anyway. I’m sure that polluters will have made the case on numerous occasions that the best available technology for their circumstances is also the cheapest.
In general though, regardless of the impact on individual enterprises, the change in approach implicit in a switch from BATNEEC to BAT must be seen as a positive move. I think this applies even where the costs are passed on to consumers. After all, if the real costs of a process are disguised because some have been offloaded onto third parties, the selling price of a product is not the economic price in any case. Someone else is paying part of the cost, but will typically not be a direct consumer. Look at this case study for example.
I say this for two primary reasons. First because it ensures that those who use a given product pay the true costs of its production, it is not subsidised by ‘innocent bystanders’ and second, because increased costs imposed at the point of pollution will drive research to reduce them – using the market to secure positive environmental changes.
I accept that the position is complicated where competing polluters in different countries are subject to different levels of pollution control, but that is always going to be the case. To argue that improvements to pollution control should wait until every one applies the same standards is effectively to argue for no change ever.
