PPC - Pollution Prevention Control (Permit)

Forgive me Bloggers, its been a few weeks since my last blog...


Part of the plan to make bioDiesel includes a "is this a business?" aspect. Living in the UK (and therefore the EU) there is a rather a lot of red tape to negotiate, particularly if there's chemical, big business and cars involved!

If we make more than 5 tonnes or about 5000 litres of BD per year, or sell any of it to the public, then I am deemed to be "Commercial" and so need regulating.

I have looked around the web and chat forums for info on the whole regulation thing and read some scare stories about consultants costing 10s of thousands needed to obtain said permits and also of the hoops to jump through if you DIY. By this time I'm getting a bit concerned so I called the Environment agency (who issue the permits) ad spoke to a very helpful chap in the local office. The long and short of it is that there are 2 types of permit, roughly based on if you dispose of by products by land fill/incineration or by other (environmentally friendly) means. His experience suggests most BD producers should be in the second group of "Low impact" permits.

Further, and this is the best bit, he advised they EA expects to offer around 15 hours of his time (he's the one who issues the permit) to assist with the forms/application process etc, free of charge. The only likely consultant costs would be the site survey (a benchmark of current site pollution/status etc).

All you have to do is ask!