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EPER: Pollution industry on line

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Subido el 5 de julio de 2007 por EducaMadrid

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The European Pollutant Emission Register is a catalogue of European industrial pollution. It is a vast database accessible over the Internet, which systematically lists the polluting emissions from 9,500 large and medium-sized industrial plants operating in the European Union. This valuable information tool was set up as an instrument for transparency to encourage a reduction in industrial pollution.

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Since February 23, 2004, this Internet user has added a new bookmark to the favorites listed in his browser. 00:00:00
The address is for the IPA site. 00:00:11
IPA is the European Pollutant Emission Register, which has been placed online by the European Commission. 00:00:13
The IPA register is meant to be transparent and accessible to all. 00:00:19
A simple click brings the Internet user onto the information highways that lead to the heart of the register. 00:00:23
IPA is a systematic listing of the pollutant emissions of nearly 10,000 industrial sites active in the 15 Union Member States and Norway. 00:00:32
These might be pig and poultry farms, cement works, chemical works, power stations. 00:00:54
That could include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, a whole range of information. 00:01:08
So the data coming from a site will be categorized into the type of pollutant, the type of installation, and where it actually is situated. 00:01:16
The pollutant emission data are provided by the companies themselves, which gives rise to a legitimate question. 00:01:27
Are they reliable? 00:01:33
The IPA system makes every effort to guarantee that its data are reliable. 00:01:37
After monitoring by industry, the data are centralized and checked by a regional or national authority. 00:01:41
Finally, they are forwarded to the European Environment Agency, which collects all the information and places it online on the Internet. 00:01:47
But let's take an example to see just how much information ends up on the IPA website. 00:01:55
To do so, we'll head for Belgium, more precisely, the Sombreville region. 00:02:00
Since 1897, the chemical industry giant Solvay has had manufacturing operations in Sombreville, 00:02:05
where it makes products like PVC, hydrogen peroxide, hydrochloric acid, and caustic soda. 00:02:11
Solvay is listed in the IPA register and collects data on its own installations. 00:02:18
This method is used here for one of the plant incinerators, which in more technical terms is called the off-gases treatment unit. 00:02:35
The unit's job is to capture and burn all the gases produced by the vinyl chloride manufacturing process. 00:02:43
The analysis is carried out continuously and will be used to establish the first evaluation of annual gas emissions. 00:03:05
The analyses are carried out continuously and will be used to establish the first evaluation of annual averages for the pollutants placed on the IPA list. 00:03:11
The list has two facets. 00:03:38
As we've seen, IPA focuses on air emissions, but it also covers water emissions. 00:03:40
The Solvay site is located near the Sombre, where the plant discharges part of its waste water. 00:03:45
Here at Drain 3, automatic sample takers operate 24 hours a day. 00:03:51
Every day, a sample is collected and taken to the laboratory for analysis. 00:03:59
These analyses make it possible to establish the company's annual pollutant discharges and to draw up the declaration for the IPA. 00:04:03
Second stage. The company's declarations are forwarded to the Walloon region. 00:04:15
This regional government is charged with issuing operating licences for enterprises. 00:04:19
Within the framework of the IPA register, the Walloon region has to check the accuracy of the data transmitted by companies. 00:04:24
Here is the declaration that the company has sent us. 00:04:33
We will cut this declaration with the additional information that we already have internally. 00:04:36
After having validated what the company has declared to us, 00:04:41
we will encode these values in a database that will be used to establish the regional report, 00:04:46
and then the national report that will be transmitted to the European Commission. 00:04:54
The data are now reaching the last leg of their journey. 00:04:59
Let's head off to Copenhagen and the European Environment Agency. 00:05:03
This is where they'll be placed online. The IPA is now ready for use. 00:05:07
The final goal of IPA is to actually present to citizens of Europe the state of environment, but at a very specific level, 00:05:12
so they can use the database to search by area, by industry, by pollutant, 00:05:20
and get information on these different aggregation levels. 00:05:26
Indeed, there are several approaches to the IPA site. 00:05:30
Let's take a lifelike example, geographical research. 00:05:34
You have a map. You zoom into the area that you're interested in, in this case Denmark. 00:05:38
On the map you can find all the large point sources covered by IPA in Denmark. 00:05:45
You can pick one of the facilities to get the detailed information about this facility. 00:05:52
Here you can, for example, see the total emissions of the different pollutants from this facility. 00:05:58
You can also see some detailed information. 00:06:03
And finally, you can see a detailed satellite image over the area that covers the facility. 00:06:08
Access to this type of data is completely new, not only for the general public, 00:06:17
but also for the companies themselves and decision makers. 00:06:22
This said, however, the information on the site can still be improved. 00:06:25
Well, when we first saw the plans for this pollution register, 00:06:29
I have to say that environmentalists were a bit disappointed in the scope of the information that would be collected. 00:06:34
So we have information on air pollution and on water pollution. 00:06:40
It covers, of course, quite a wide range of industry, but some sectors are missing. 00:06:45
I mean, we would like to see the nuclear industry incorporated, for example. 00:06:50
Because we're at the very beginning of IPA, we have to establish what's called a baseline. 00:06:54
There has to be a start. So what you will see in the first version is, of course, the start. 00:06:59
Nevertheless, you know, for the first time in many instances, 00:07:04
there will be comparable information available on tens of thousands of industrial facilities across the EU. 00:07:08
This is an important milestone, I think, in giving the public the right to know about sources of pollution. 00:07:15
Today, for its first online release, the IPA has collected data on pollutant emissions registered in 2001. 00:07:22
These data will be updated in three years. 00:07:28
The new version of the site, planned for late 2006, will also list emissions for the ten new member states, 00:07:31
provide links to other European data banks and be translated into the Union's official languages. 00:07:37
Over the longer term, other types of pollutant will be covered, particularly industrial waste. 00:07:42
We want to use a register like this that shows the pollutants into air and water as an engine for change. 00:07:47
Because what we want to achieve is, of course, to reduce emissions of pollutants. 00:07:55
And this is a very good instrument, a very good tool for change. 00:08:02
The information highways now lead to the IPA. 00:08:10
European companies and states have worked together to develop openness in environmental matters. 00:08:13
The European public, with a simple click of the mouse, can now keep track of, evaluate and compare 00:08:18
the performances of industrial installations from one end of the Union to the other. 00:08:24
Change lies at the end of the road. 00:08:29
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Idioma/s:
en
Niveles educativos:
▼ Mostrar / ocultar niveles
      • Nivel Intermedio
Autor/es:
The European Union
Subido por:
EducaMadrid
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
Visualizaciones:
2591
Fecha:
5 de julio de 2007 - 12:05
Visibilidad:
Público
Enlace Relacionado:
European Commission
Duración:
08′ 41″
Relación de aspecto:
4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
Resolución:
320x240 píxeles
Tamaño:
43.20 MBytes

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