Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions from industry and power generation are kept within safe limits in Weaver Vale and Halton constituencies.
The Environment Agency’s environmental permitting regime carried out under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016 requires operators of “regulated facilities” including industry carrying out certain activities above certain thresholds including chemicals, combustion and energy from waste activities to obtain a permit. In this way the Environmental Permitting Regulations provide for ongoing supervision by the EA of activities which could harm the environment. The aim of the permitting regime is to:
The majority of environmental quality and specific permitting standards and other related requirements for environmental and human health protection come from Directives. The Environmental Permitting Regulations ensure that those Directives and national policy requirements, and outcomes that can be delivered through a permitting and compliance system, are delivered by the Environmental Permitting Regulations.
The Environmental Permitting Regulations place duties on regulators to exercise their permit-related functions to deliver the obligations and outcomes required by the relevant Directives and, in some cases, national policy. In practice, this means that the EA will ensure, where a permit is granted, that permit conditions achieve the objectives and intended outcomes of any of the Directives or national policy which apply.
The EA has specialist Industry sector groups set up such as 'Energy from Waste', ‘Chemicals’ and 'Combustion' with appropriate expertise in ensuring permit compliance. The EA also has sector plans with periodic review of permits to meet the latest environmental standards. These sector groups also engage with trade bodies and industry sectors to ensure that operators know and understand the requirements, and to implement them in a cost-effective way that also minimises environmental risks.