Preventing Environmental Impacts in National IED Plants: A Self-Monitoring Model

Industrial pollution can be considered the wrong side of an increasing state of well-being, which has been achieved in recent years. Throughout the world, different approaches have been adopted to cope with environmental issues, related to air pollution, industrial discharges, production of industrial waste, noise etc. In Europe, more than 50 000 industrial installations have been subjected to the legislative framework stated by the Directive 2010/75/EU (Industrial Emissions Directive—IED), requiring the integrated management of pollution prevention and control. In Italy, about 6300 installations work under the conditions established in Integrated Environmental Authorizations (IEA), which are released by an environmental authority, according to the provisions of Legislative Decree 152/2006. In such authorizations, emission self-monitoring plays an important role to prevent and manage potential pollution. So, in Italy ISPRA carried out a research work to yield a reference model for environmental monitoring in national IED plants. The proposed work considered first the organization of the data sent by operators to the national environmental authority in the period 2019–2022. Then, starting from the principles stated in ISO 14001 Regulation on environmental management systems and JRC guidelines on monitoring IED installations (ROM-2018), a general model was developed to plan self-monitoring in thermoelectric, chemical plants and refineries. Overall, the paper aims to explain such a general environmental self-monitoring plan, which could be further improved to fit a wider range of European installations.