Ukraine explores Finland’s and Estonia’s experience in implementing integrated environmental permits

From 10 to 18 Octo­ber, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ukrain­ian pub­lic author­i­ties vis­it­ed Fin­land and Esto­nia to learn about Euro­pean expe­ri­ence in imple­ment­ing inte­grat­ed envi­ron­men­tal per­mits for small and medi­um-sized indus­tri­al instal­la­tions. 

The study vis­it brought togeth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Econ­o­my and Envi­ron­ment of Ukraine, the State Agency on Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy and Ener­gy Sav­ing of Ukraine, the State Agency of Water Resources of Ukraine, and the State Envi­ron­men­tal Inspec­torate of Ukraine. 

What are unified environmental permits, and how do they benefit businesses? 

Indus­tri­al facil­i­ties must com­ply with a range of envi­ron­men­tal require­ments, includ­ing mon­i­tor­ing air emis­sions, man­ag­ing waste­water and waste, and assess­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact of their oper­a­tions. Meet­ing these require­ments involves obtain­ing the rel­e­vant per­mits, prepar­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and fol­low­ing estab­lished pro­ce­dures. 

Uni­fied envi­ron­men­tal per­mits bring togeth­er require­ments cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent aspects of an indus­tri­al installation’s envi­ron­men­tal impact with­in a sin­gle per­mit­ting frame­work for small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es. 

This approach reduces the num­ber of admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures and estab­lish­es clear require­ments for busi­ness­es. For exam­ple, a facil­i­ty that affects air qual­i­ty may find it eas­i­er to com­ply with a sin­gle per­mit that con­sol­i­dates the rel­e­vant require­ments than to nav­i­gate sev­er­al sep­a­rate per­mit­ting pro­ce­dures. 

Clear­ly defined require­ments also help busi­ness­es plan their pro­duc­tion process­es, under­stand their oblig­a­tions and antic­i­pate the costs of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion mea­sures. For pub­lic author­i­ties, such a sys­tem pro­vides a basis for con­sis­tent over­sight of envi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance. 

Finland’s experience 

In Fin­land, the Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Finnish Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment and the Finnish super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty. The par­tic­i­pants explored how envi­ron­men­tal gov­er­nance is organ­ised, how the per­mit­ting sys­tem oper­ates, and how pub­lic over­sight, pro­ce­dur­al trans­paren­cy and pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion are ensured. 

Meet­ings with spe­cial­ists from the City of Helsin­ki focused on the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of per­mit­ting pro­ce­dures and prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in reg­u­lat­ing live­stock farm­ing oper­a­tions in light of the updat­ed require­ments of the Indus­tri­al Emis­sions Direc­tive (IED 2.0). 

The pro­gramme also includ­ed tech­ni­cal vis­its to indus­tri­al facil­i­ties, where the par­tic­i­pants learned how envi­ron­men­tal require­ments are applied in prac­tice: 

• The del­e­ga­tion explored approach­es to mea­sur­ing stack emis­sions, flue gas treat­ment sys­tems, tech­nolo­gies for reduc­ing emis­sions, high-tem­per­a­ture incin­er­a­tion and plas­tic recy­cling dur­ing their vis­it to NG Nordic com­pa­ny. 
• At Teknos, the par­tic­i­pants learned about prac­tices for reg­u­lat­ing and mon­i­tor­ing volatile organ­ic com­pound (VOC) emis­sions at a paints and coat­ings man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty.
  
• Dur­ing a vis­it to Helen com­pa­ny and its com­bined heat and pow­er (CHP) plant, the del­e­ga­tion exam­ined the envi­ron­men­tal aspects of ener­gy pro­duc­tion, the use of nat­ur­al gas and bio­mass, emis­sions treat­ment and mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, and the spe­cif­ic fea­tures of envi­ron­men­tal per­mit­ting in the ener­gy sec­tor. 

These exam­ples pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine how envi­ron­men­tal require­ments are applied across dif­fer­ent indus­tries and how busi­ness­es imple­ment tech­ni­cal solu­tions to mon­i­tor and con­trol their envi­ron­men­tal impact. 

Estonia’s experience 

In Esto­nia, the Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion explored how require­ments relat­ed to air qual­i­ty, water resources, waste man­age­ment and min­er­al resource con­sump­tion can be con­sol­i­dat­ed into a uni­fied envi­ron­men­tal per­mit. 

Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion was paid to KOTKAS, a dig­i­tal sys­tem used by appli­cants to inter­act with envi­ron­men­tal author­i­ties. It enables users to sub­mit doc­u­ments, man­age per­mits, report on envi­ron­men­tal impacts and pro­vide the required data for mon­i­tor­ing. Such tools make it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to track per­mit­ting pro­ce­dures and com­ply with estab­lished require­ments, while help­ing pub­lic author­i­ties process infor­ma­tion and car­ry out over­sight. 

The par­tic­i­pants saw how these require­ments are applied in indus­tri­al oper­a­tions dur­ing a vis­it to the BLRT indus­tri­al group. They learned about the organ­i­sa­tion of emis­sions mon­i­tor­ing and the company’s prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of work­ing with envi­ron­men­tal author­i­ties. 

How can this experience benefit Ukraine? 

The aim is to bring Ukraine’s envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work clos­er to EU stan­dards and leg­is­la­tion, cre­ate con­di­tions for respon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices and ensure effec­tive envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. 

The expe­ri­ence of Fin­land and Esto­nia will help iden­ti­fy prac­tices that could be applied to improve Ukraine’s envi­ron­men­tal per­mit­ting sys­tem. This, in turn, can help busi­ness­es com­ply with envi­ron­men­tal require­ments and enable pub­lic author­i­ties to mon­i­tor and reg­u­late the envi­ron­men­tal impact of indus­tri­al activ­i­ties more effec­tive­ly. 

The study vis­it was organ­ised joint­ly by the projects “Best Avail­able Tech­niques (BAT) for Ukraine” and “Sup­port­ing Ukraine in the imple­men­ta­tion of the Paris Agree­ment in Ukraine (PAABS),” imple­ment­ed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN) under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).