Best Available Techniques Reference Document
EU information standard

Best Available Techniques Reference Documents (BREFs) are reference reports developed in the European Union to describe industrial processes, emission and consumption levels of applied techniques, and best available techniques for integrated prevention and control of pollution from industrial activities.
Background
BREFs are drawn up through an exchange information between industry, non-government organizations (NGOs) promoting environmental protection, Member States of the European Union, and the European Commission following Article 13(1) of the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU. The European Commission organises and coordinates the information exchange through the European Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Bureau (EIPPCB), which is part of Directorate-General Joint Research Centre. The EIPPCB is located in Seville, Spain. The information exchange, including the steps for drawing up BREFs, is codified into law by Commission Implementing Decision 2012/119/EU and commonly referred to as Sevilla process.
Most BREFs cover one or several agro-industrial activities listed in Annex I of the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU. Such BREFs are referred to as 'sectoral BREFs'. There are also 'horizontal BREFs' on cross-cutting issues such as energy efficiency, industrial cooling systems, emissions from storage, or monitoring of emissions to air and water.
BREFs established under the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU contain a chapter on 'BAT conclusions'. This chapter is adopted as stand-alone document through Comitology and is published as EU implementing decision in the Official Journal of the European Union. 'BAT conclusions' are to be considered by Member States of the European Union as reference when setting permit conditions for all installations within the scope of the Industrial Emissions Directive.
Definitions
Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document (BREF) is defined in Article 3(11) of the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU as: "[...] a document, resulting from the exchange of information organised pursuant to Article 13, drawn up for defined activities and describing, in particular, applied techniques, present emissions and consumption levels, techniques considered for the determination of best available techniques as well as BAT conclusions and any emerging techniques, giving special consideration to the criteria listed in Annex III".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 18, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q60795850. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Best Available Techniques Reference Document” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.