The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

2.0 Background

Objectives of PRTRs

2.1 Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers ( PRTRs) are publicly accessible compilations of data that describe the releases of substances to the environment and waste transfers. They have three primary aims:

• to provide the public with easy access to information about pollution from industrial sources both in their local area and nationally;
• to help environmental regulators protect the environment by providing information to aid policy development and monitor the effectiveness of policies; and
• to help the Government meet its national and international commitments and obligations for reporting of pollutant releases, e.g. the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

2.2 The process of reporting to PRTRs can additionally promote pollution prevention by indicating to reporters, especially small and medium sized enterprises, the amount of often valuable material resources being released as pollutants, and thus, potentially wasted. Environmental technologies or innovative techniques may be able to reduce or harness such waste, increasing the efficiency of the economy.

2.3 There is also a suggestion that PRTRs and the new forms of engagement between regulators, industry and stakeholder groups that they help to stimulate, can have a significant effect on the perceived accountability of the regulatory process and the degree of confidence that local communities and stakeholders have in local companies and regulators ⁴.

PRTRs in the UK

2.4 The Environment Agency for England and Wales created its on-line Pollution Inventory ⁵ ( PI) of annual emissions of pollutants emitted from industrial activities, in 1998. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency ( SEPA) established a similar Scottish inventory in 2004, called the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory ⁶ ( SPRI). In Northern Ireland, the Environment and Heritage Service ( NIEHS) operates a Pollution Inventory reporting system, though access is only available to the public on request via its paper based public register.

2.5 The inventories collect data in accordance with defined release and transfer thresholds - these were subject to a full public consultation in March 2005 ⁷, and will be reconsidered in a further consultation in 2008.

2.6 The Department of Trade and Industry ( DBERR) also collects emissions data for offshore oil and gas installations through the Environmental Emissions Monitoring System ( EEMS), though there is no provision for direct public access.

2.7 In this consultation document, unless specifically mentioned, these various UK reporting systems will be referred to as the ' UK inventories.' SEPA, the Environment Agency, and the NIEHS will collectively be referred to as 'the UK environment agencies.'

2.8 Looking more widely, the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory ( NAEI) compiles and makes publicly available estimates of emissions to the atmosphere from both point and diffuse UK sources, such as cars, trucks, power stations and industrial plants. The NAEI is funded by Defra, the Scottish Executive, the National Assembly for Wales and the Department of Environment, Northern Ireland.

European and international obligations

2.9 The UK inventories have provided much of the information for the UK's submissions to the EPER - a PRTR that operates at the level of the European Union ⁸. Under the EPER, Member States produced a report every three years ⁹ on the emissions of industrial activities regulated under IPPC into air and water. The European Commission made the data publicly available via its website ¹⁰.

2.10 The development of the EPER was taken further when the European Community and its Member States (with the exception of Malta and Slovakia) signed the PRTR Protocol (to the Aarhus Convention) in May 2003. The obligations of the PRTR Protocol extend beyond those of EPER in a number of ways, including:

• more activities are required to report data;
• there are more substances on which to report;
• operators are required to report releases to land and off-site waste transfers;
• the PRTR must include releases from diffuse sources, such as transport;
• data must be reported on an annual basis; and
• signatory states are required to establish a publicly accessible national PRTR.

2.11 It is common practice for European Community law to be brought in line with the provisions of an international agreement, such as the PRTR Protocol, before that agreement is ratified by the European Community and its Members States. To enable this, the EPER has been replaced by the E-PRTR Regulation, which entered into force on 24 February 2006. There are, however, some elements of the PRTR Protocol that the E-PRTR Regulation does not address, including the need to establish a publicly accessible national PRTR. The first reporting year for the E-PRTR is 2007 - this refers to the year in which releases and waste transfers occur.

2.12 To avoid having to refer to both the PRTR Protocol and the E-PRTR Regulation each time, the PRTR Protocol will only be referred to when its provisions are not met by those of the E-PRTR Regulation.

Implementing the E-PRTR Regulation and PRTR Protocol

2.13 The UK's existing pollution inventories (see paras. 2.4 & 2.6) take us a significant way towards implementing the E-PRTR Regulation and PRTR Protocol. There are, however, a number of ways in which these existing practices need to be extended in order to enable full compliance and thus a more sophisticated PRTR system in the UK:

• E-PRTR data needs to be collected for several new industry sectors;
• in respect of transboundary movements of hazardous waste, details of the name and address of the recoverer or the disposer of the waste and the actual recovery or disposal site, needs to be reported;
• the reporting requirements for offshore oil and gas installations (via the EEMS) need to be fully aligned with those of the E-PRTR Regulation; and
• the UK needs to establish a publicly accessible national PRTR.

2.14 This consultation document sets out proposals for making these changes. It also discusses issues around the quality assessment of E-PRTR data, the treatment of confidential data, and arrangements for compiling and co-ordinating the UK's E-PRTR data submission to the European Commission.

« Previous | Contents | Next »