How to comply with your environmental permit Additional guidance for:

Horizontal Guidance Note H1 - Annex (h)

Published by: Environment Agency Rio House Waterside Drive, Aztec West Almondsbury, Bristol BS32 4UD Tel: 0870 8506506 Email: enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk www.environment-agency.gov.uk Environment Agency All rights reserved. This document may be reproduced with prior permission of the Environment Agency. April 2010 GEHO0410BSHR-E-E

Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 2 About this guidance................................................................................................. 2 Overview ................................................................................................................. 3 H1 software tool ...................................................................................................... 4 Annex (h) Global warming potential ......................................................................... 5 Identify greenhouse gas emissions......................................................................... 5 Direct releases .................................................................................................... 5 Indirect releases .................................................................................................. 5 Calculate the global warming potential of emissions .............................................. 6 Calculate the global warming potential of each option............................................ 6 What you should do next......................................................................................... 7 Appendix A Global warming potential .................................................................. 8 Appendix B Global warming potential of energy use ......................................... 10

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Introduction
Introduction About this guidance
This guide on assessing global warming potential is a part of the Environment Agencys H1 Environmental Risk Assessment 1 framework (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Structure of H1 framework

Environment Agency. (2009) H1 Environmental Risk Assessment Main Guidance. Environment Agency, Bristol. (Available on the Environment Agency website)

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Introduction
You should follow this guide if: you are applying for a permit under the Environmental Permitting Regulations you need to carry out a bespoke risk assessment you are working through H1 Environmental Risk Assessment you have been advised to assess the global warming potential of your activity.

You should not work through this guidance without first reading through H1 Environmental Risk Assessment Overview to see how it fits in to the risk assessment process for permit applications and carrying out the necessary preliminary steps. .

Overview
This guide will help you identify emissions from your activity that contribute to global warming and quantify their impact. This includes both direct emissions of greenhouse gases from your activities (including process- and energy-related emissions) and indirect emissions from your primary source of heat or power. This assessment therefore takes account of the energy efficiency of your operation. The calculation of global warming potential is required for a permitted activity subject to the IPPC Directive irrespective of participation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme or the Climate Change Agreement programme. It is particularly important to help choose between control measures that balance environmental risk against energy use. The impacts of greenhouse gasses are difficult to quantify directly and there is no universally accepted methodology to assess them by looking at their environmental concentrations. The approach in this guide uses an index calculated by multiplying the annual mass of each released greenhouse gas by an index of its global warming potential 2 . This is repeated for all gases released from an option and summed to give an overall index of global warming potential.

The global warming potential is the cumulative radiative forcing between the present and a future time horizon caused by a unit release relative to CO2 (usually 100 years).

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Introduction
This simple approach is broken down into three steps that you should complete for each option: identify greenhouse gas emissions calculate the global warming potential of emissions calculate the total global warming potential for each option.

There is no screening step so all emissions of greenhouse gases should be included.

H1 software tool
The Environment Agency has developed a software tool to perform many of the calculations used here, which is available through our website.

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

Annex (h) Global warming potential Identify greenhouse gas emissions
You should identify all releases of greenhouse gases that arise from each option from the list provided in Appendix A. You should include: direct emissions produced or associated with storage, handling and process operations of permitted activities direct emissions produced or associated with energy use by permitted activities indirect emissions associated with heat or power used by permitted activities that is imported into the installation any other relevant indirect emissions.

Direct releases
You may already have identified many of your direct releases if you have carried out an assessment of air emissions.

Indirect releases
Operators of installations need to consider energy efficiency to determine the Best Available Technique. Since the major environmental impacts of energy efficiency are associated with greenhouse gas releases, it is important to include these releases in calculating the global warming potential of an activity. You will need to work out the indirect releases from the conversion of energy at the installation as well as imported energy such as electrical power. To do this, assess the amount of energy used by each option, together with its source and the amount of greenhouse gas released per unit of energy used. Appendix B gives advice on how to do this.

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

Standard factors for carbon dioxide emissions are available for certain primary fuels and for converting electricity imported from the public supply back to primary energy. You should limit indirect emissions to those that obviously need to be included to avoid distorting the comparison of options. Such situations may arise when comparing options using raw materials that have been subjected to different levels of pre-treatment before use at the installation. For example, using lime instead of limestone as a reagent for the scrubbing of acid gases will result in similar carbon dioxide emissions but the release will shift to point of primary production. It is recommended that you seek advice from the Environment Agency if other indirect emissions may be relevant.

Calculate the global warming potential of emissions

You should now calculate the global warming potential of each released substance by multiplying its annual released mass by its Global Warming Potential value in Appendix A. Take care to use consistent units in calculations. Note that the carbon dioxide emissions from renewable energy sources (such as biomass or waste) should be assumed to have zero global warming potential. This is to conform to convention to treat such emissions as carbon dioxide neutral.

Calculate the global warming potential of each option

Calculate the total global warming potential of each option by summing the contributions of each released substance. You should present the global warming potential of each option in a way that allows them to be readily compared. Note that the H1 software tool will do this for you.

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

What you should do next
If you are happy that you have completed your assessment of global warming potential correctly, you should: complete any other risk assessments for your activity, as set out in Step 2 of H1 Environmental Risk Assessment Overview if you have assessed all the risks from your activity, continue with Step 3 of H1 Environmental Risk Assessment Overview for advice on choosing control measures..

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

Appendix A Global warming potential
Table A1 - Net Global Warming Potentials relative to CO2 over 100 years. Substance Carbon dioxide Methane Nitrous oxide Others HFC-23 HFC-32 HFC-41 HFC-43-10mee HFC-125 HFC-134 HFC-134a HFC-152a HFC-143 HFC-143a HFC-227ea HFC-236fa HFC-245ca Chloroform Methylene chloride Sulphur hexafluoride Perfluoromethane Perfluoroethane Perfluorocyclobutane Perfluoropentane Perfluorohexane CHF3 CH2F2 CH3F C4H2F10 C2HF5 C2H2F4 CH2FCF3 C2H4F2 C2H3F3 C2H3F3 C3HF7 C3H2F6 C3H3F5 CHCl3 CH2Cl2 SF6 CF4 C2F6 C-C4F8 C5F12 C6F14 264 5.6 3.7 17.1 32.6 10.6 14.6 1.5 3.8 48.3 36.5 209 6.6 0.51 0.46 3200 50000 10000 3200 4100 3200 12000 550 97 1500 3400 1100 1300 120 330 4300 3500 6300 640 4 9 23900 5700 11900 10000 8900 9000
v2.0 April 2010

Chemical formula CO2 CH4 N2O

Atmospheric lifetime (yrs) variable 12.3 120

Global warming potential (GWP) 1 21 310

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

(Typical uncertainty 35% relative to CO2, Source: IPCC 1996) Net Global Warming Potentials relative to CO2 over 100 years. (Typical uncertainty 35% relative to CO2, Source: IPCC 1996)

Substance
Carbon tetrachloride Methyl chloroform CFCs CFC-11 CFC-12 CFC-13 CFC-113 CFC-114 CFC-115 HCFCs HCFFC-22 HCFC-123 HCFC-124 HCFC-141b HCFC-142b HCFC-225ca HCFC-225cb Bromocarbons H-1301

Chemical formula
CCl4 CH3CCl3 CFCl3 CF2Cl3 CClF3 C2F3Cl3 C2F4Cl2 C2F5Cl CF2HCl C2F3HCl2 C2F4HCl C2FH3Cl2 C2F2H3Cl C3F5HCl2 C3F5Cl2 CF3Br

Atmospheric lifetime (yrs)

42 5.40.6 50+/-5 102 640 85 300 1700 13.3 1.4 5.9 9.4 19.5 2.5 6.6 65

Global warming potential (GWP)

1400 110 4000 85000 11700 5000 9300 9300 1700 93 480 630 2000 170 530 5600

Table A1 (cont) - Net Global Warming Potentials relative to CO2 over 100 years. REGULATION (EC) No 842/2006 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 May 2006 on certain fluorinated greenhouse gases
Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h v2.0 April 2010

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

Appendix B Global warming potential of energy use
We are interested in the amount of energy you use because this may be an important factor in the environmental risk posed by the site in terms of global warming potential. It also effects emissions to air. There are a number of emissions associated with energy use. Direct emissions resulting from energy use within the activities (such as NOx, SO2 etc) should be included according to the relevant source and medium to which they are released (e.g. under releases to air), except for carbon dioxide which should be listed separately as shown below. In addition to any direct releases, the indirect emissions of carbon dioxide associated with imported energy (heat and/or power) should be provided. Standard conversion efficiency and emission factors for energy are given in Table B2 (and are included in the H1 software tool)

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

10

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

Table B1 - Energy sources, conversion efficiency and emission factors

Energy source

Location of emission
Indirect Indirect Indirect Indirect Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct Direct

*Delivered to primary conversion factor

2.4 Operator to specify N/a Operator to specify 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

CO2 factor (t/mwh, primary)

0.166 Operator to specify 0 Operator to specify 0.300 0.430 0.250 0.260 0.240 0.230 0.240 0.240 0.200 0.200 0.340 0.190 Operator to specify 0

Electricity from public supply Electricity from other source Renewable electricity Other imported energy (steam etc) Coal Coke Gas oil Heavy fuel oil Petrol Liquid petroleum gas Jet kerosene Ethane Naphtha Refinery gas Petroleum coke Natural gas Other (Operator to specify) Renewable (see text)

* This factor is for the conversion from delivered energy to primary energy, not taking into account transport or transmission losses. It is required for non-renewable sources of heat and power that are not generated directly at the installation, in order to estimate the actual CO2 emissions at source.

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

11

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

For carbon dioxide released from the conversion of renewable sources, a factor of zero should be assigned. Renewable non-fossil energy sources include biomass, landfill gas, sewage treatment plant gas and biogas. Biomass means the biodegradeable fraction of products, waste and residues from agriculture (including vegetable and animal substances), forestry and related industries, as well as the biodegradable fraction of industrial and municipal waste. Direct and indirect emissions of carbon dioxide can be calculated using the factors provided in the table below or by using of factors derived from on-site heat and/or power generation. The values in this table are consistent with factors used for climate change levy and negotiated agreements. Table B2 Energy emission factors

Carbon dioxide Emission Factor Fuel

Electricity* Coal Coke Gas oil Heavy fuel oil Petrol Liquid petroleum gas Jet kerosene Ethane Naphtha Refinery gas Petroleum coke Natural gas t / MWh 0.166 0.300 0.430 0.250 0.260 0.240 0.230 0.240 0.200 0.260 0.200 0.340 0.190 t/GJ 0.0462 0.0832 0.1192 0.0693 0.0722 0.0667 0.0638 0.0667 0.0557 0.0722 0.0191 0.0946 0.0528

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

12

Annexes

Annex (h) Global warming potential

By convention and for consistency with government schemes, the data is presented as primary energy i.e. based on the thermal input to conversion processes generating heat and/or power, whether these be direct conversion at the installation or input to the national grid electricity supply. Note that a proportion of power generation is supplied by nuclear capacity which has a zero carbon input and this results in a relatively low primary factor for electricity. However, where operators import electricity from the grid, they must also take into account the efficiency of converting the thermal input into electrical output. A high proportion of the national electricity supply is from large generators that have a relatively low thermal efficiency. Therefore, to convert the primary energy figure shown here for electricity, Operators must also multiply by a factor of 2.4 to take efficiency losses into account. For example: 100MWh electricity from national supply x 2.4 x 166 = 39,840 kg carbon dioxide emissions. The Operator should specify the appropriate factor for other electricity and heat supplies, e.g. direct supplies from CHPs or energy from waste. Further information is provided in Horizontal Guidance H2 Energy Efficiency. Where heat and power is sourced from a renewable source, this can be assigned a zero carbon dioxide value.

Environment Agency H1 Environmental Risk Assessment annex h

v2.0 April 2010

13