Legislation, legislation, legislation means data, data, data...
April 1st 2004 Data collection is at the heart of dealing with the IPPC directive or CCL commitments says David Parsons of Meteor Communications (Europe)
UK Industry has had to face a landslide of well-intentioned EU environmental legislation in recent years and much of industry will see the extra costs as yet more challenges to be overcome.
Two key pieces of legislation, having a profound effect on industry, are the Climate Change Levy (CCL) and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive. Clearly these are viewed as separate issues by Government, consultants and suppliers, as indicated by the plethora of specialist groups involved in each. Labels such as energy procurement, energy management, waste minimisation, effluent treatment, emission control and environmental risk assessments are applied. Unfortunately, the harassed environmental advisor of Acme Food Products may not see this specialisation as a benefit. As far as they are concerned it has all been categorised as hassle by their management and dumped in their lap to sort out with the proviso that they should satisfy the legislators at the minimum cost.
Some companies, looking for a common denominator, have approached this legislation by the implementation of a suitable Environmental Management System (EMS) such as ISO14001 and/or the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). These provide the highest level of accreditation for environmental standards but still may not always meet all of the requirements. Therefore, many companies are taking a less complex, more company focussed route and implementing their own site-specific schemes.
Meteor Communications (Europe) (MCE) is a well-established data collection solutions provider specialising in the environmental sector and benefiting from having its own licensed UK-wide digital radio network. MCEs design team see IPPC and CCL as essentially data collection tasks, which offer an early return on investment if handled appropriately.
IPPC covers emissions to air, land and water but it goes much further and also includes energy efficiency, water use, waste minimisation, noise, vibration, odour, environmental accidents and site protection. The environmental impact of a process or activity is summarised in application forms on a site-by-site basis. Although completion of these forms is a far from trivial task, obtaining and keeping an IPPC permit is not simply a paperwork exercise. One of the more obvious common features of the current raft of environmental legislation is that companies have to demonstrate year-on-year improvements. This is where the data acquisition comes in. How much energy and water do you use now? What are your emissions to air and what is the quality and quantity of your effluent? What do you know about the existing environmental status of your site? Without these and many other baselines, how are you going to demonstrate improvements in the coming months and years?
It is very easy to see data collection equipment as even more expense coming straight off your bottom line but, digging a little deeper, reveals opportunities to save money. MCE decided that real-time automatic monitoring was the key and that the wide scope of IPPC could be turned to advantage by sharing the same cost effective data collection paths for such checklist items as:
Utility meter reading
Process monitoring
Wastewater effluent analysis
Air emissions
Noise levels
This integrated approach facilitates pay-back opportunities for reducing energy and water usage, lowering effluent charges and improving your good neighbour status. Furthermore the data collected provides an ideal reference to confirm compliance and underpin your companys green credentials. The result of our deliberations is a modular family of sensor-to-screen systems under the banner of EcoNet-UK.
EcoNet-UK systems can be thought of as Automatic Monitoring & Targeting (AMT) Equipment which helps users to save energy and water resources by collecting sufficient relevant background data to be able to identify and then improve problem areas. This kind of proactive study is encouraged by the UK Government and they offer a 100% first-year Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) to purchasers.
Self-monitoring legislation can appear to be very daunting and although plenty of help is available, every site will have a different mix of requirements and every solution will be somewhat unique. A new kind of service provider is required, ideally, one that is independent and free to adopt a modular approach to achieving the most cost-effective solution for their clients. This new functionality, as embodied by EcoNet-UK, is based on integrated data hosting and a single client/partner interface. MCEs advice would be to act early, get a site survey and help with the completion of the permit application. Most importantly, treat automatic data collection as the platform on which to support your application, help you to agree your compliance details, and confirm your future improvement targets have been met. The three most important things are data, data, data | 
