Author(s)

D. Damigos & D. Kaliampakos

Abstract

In recent years, legislative requirements and environmental policies at European, as well as national, level seek to internalize the environmental impacts that have been traditionally viewed as externalities, in order to come up with more informed and fair choices. The IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) Directive 96/61/EC lays down a framework requiring Member States to issue operating permits for certain installations based on best available techniques (BAT) in order to achieve a high level of protection of the environment. This framework gives clearly importance to economic aspects. More specific, the environmental effects of an installation or a sector are compared against the costs for taking preventive measures against pollution, in order to determine which, if any, meet the criteria of BAT. The scope of the paper is to explore the effects of BAT implementation in the Greek steel sector towards eliminating air emissions from steel production. The analysis is based on pollutant emissions gathered by reports prepared for the European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER) and on external costs, in terms of euros per tonne of pollutant emitted, generated by European Programmes. The externalities estimated are compared to important financial indicators of individual steel producers and of the sector, as well, in order to provide necessary input for assessing the economic viability of the industry under investigation. Keywords: externalities, steel industry, air emissions, best available techniques. 1 Introduction It is commonly accepted that iron and steel, together with coal, have played an important role in the development of human civilisation. These were the

Keywords

externalities, steel industry, air emissions, best available techniques.