Secretariat publishes detailed information on Ukraine’s large combustion plants under opt-out regime

Article 4(4) of the Large Combustion Plants Directive provides an implementation alternative for plants reaching the end of their lifetime. According to this regime (called limited lifetime derogation or opt-out), combustion plants can remain operational either until a certain number of operational hours or a given end date, whichever comes first. In exchange, they are exempted from compliance with the emission limit values of the Directive in this transitional period.

Following the adoption of Decisions 2013/05/MC-EnC and 2015/07/MC-EnC (the latter to reflect the specific situation of Ukraine), the Ministerial Council established the list of plants eligible for opt-out via Decision 2016/19/MC-EnC.

In its 2019 Annual Implementation Report, the Secretariat provided estimates for the remaining lifetime of each opted-out plant. The estimates were calculated based on the number of operational hours in 2018 (the first year of implementation of the Large Combustion Plants Directive in the Energy Community) and an extrapolation of that usage rate based on the presumption that the plants will remain operational at a similar level to 2018.

Due to the large number of the plants concerned, such an estimate could not have been provided at individual level for Ukraine, only an average was included for plants falling under Annex I and Annex II of Decision 2016/19/MC-EnC, respectively. The information published today fills this gap by presenting a plant-by-plant breakdown for all large combustion plants operating under the opt-out regime in Ukraine, thereby providing a complete picture also for this Contracting Party.