Better rake can only be rake

"Environmental" Deputy Prime Minister Viktoria Abramchenko instructed by November to supplement the law on the experiment on emission quotas in cities with dirty air with a section on administrative responsibility. The law was adopted in 2019 as the basis for the federal project "Clean Air" of the national project "Ecology". The goal is to test technological rationing (based on the principle of best available technologies, BAT) at enterprises in 12 cities with the dirtiest air.

The idea itself comes from OECD countries: it is based on agreements between authorities, companies and NGOs to achieve agreed goals through a joint action plan. In the Russian version, the goals were launched by the project: it requires a reduction of at least 20% of the total volume of emissions by 2024, and the presidential decree requires a halving of emissions of hazardous pollutants by 2030, but due to the "contractual" nature of the experiment, the framework law of responsibility for them non-performance did not expect.

Democratic procedures imposed on local reality did not work. Although the "gentlemen's agreements", as they are called in the White House, were signed in 12 cities back in 2019-2020, it was only on July 4 that Ms Abramchenko announced the emergence of comprehensive plans to reduce emissions in five of the 12 cities. The interlocutor of Kommersant in the White House explains: "The polluters sign agreements, but then postpone the dates." Officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Rosprirodnadzor have been pushing for the introduction of administrative responsibility for ignoring the experiment since February. Rosprirodnadzor told Kommersant that for refusal to provide data for pollution assessments, obstacles to inspections, lack of proposals for emission quotas, evasion from the development and implementation of action plans for their implementation, small monetary fines are offered (500 thousand rubles. ) and an increase in fees for the emission of pollutants in excess of quotas by a factor of one hundred.

At the same time, the interlocutor of Kommersant in Rosprirodnadzor could not explain what prevents the application of sanctions of current legislation to violators of agreements for violation of sanitary or technological standards. Formally, indeed, these laws regulate different relations, but if Rosprirodnadzor had obtained from the companies actual, and not paper-based, compliance with the current regulations, the goal of regulation was achieved. The official agrees that as part of the "fastening" of administrative responsibility to the experimental legislation, the third system of environmental rationing of industrial load is being created de facto, and admits that the rationing system has become super complicated and incomprehensible to companies, and the connection to the experiment on quotas of 22 more cities was announced at SPIEF, does not make much sense in the absence of success at the current stage of the experiment. And, of course, the third system of fines can hardly change anything: the reform was needed because the previous problem did not solve.

Source: kommersant.ru