The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment

Introduction

The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 (“the 2025 Regulations”) include new activities which will be brought within the scope of the integrated authorisation framework, enacted by the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 and regulated by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

The 2025 Regulations are designed to consolidate the integrated authorisation framework, bringing together all the regulatory authorisation arrangements for SEPA’s four main regulatory areas (water, waste, radioactive substances and Pollution Prevention and Control) into an integrated structure under a single standardised procedure.

This final BRIA expands on the partial BRIA that was published alongside Scottish Government’s consultation on the 2025 Regulations.

Environmental regulation is currently more complex than it needs to be. The four existing main environmental regimes regulate activities throughout Scotland at many locations, and have multiple authorisations under different legislation, covering one or more activity, often at the same location. Regulating multiple authorisations requires different procedures, different monitoring arrangements and multiple inspections by different officers.

The 2018 Regulations came into force in September 2018. These regulations set out the common procedures for an integrated authorisation framework. The aim of the framework is to integrate, as far as possible, the authorisation, procedural and enforcement arrangements relating to the four main areas of SEPA’s regulatory work.

The majority of the changes to SEPA’s authorisation structure do not involve any substantive changes to the role SEPA carries out or to operators’ obligations under these four regulated areas. However, the 2025 Regulations also bring into scope activities that were previously outwith the scope of sector-specific regulatory arrangements, or that involve certain changes to their regulation. It is these specific changes that are the subject of this final BRIA. The activities that this BRIA concerns are as follows.

Changes to regulation of:

• Sewage sludge activities (schedule 18; recovery of waste by application to land for the purpose of soil improvement)

Extension of environmental regulation (“newly in scope”) to:

• Additional Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) activities
• Non-waste anaerobic digestion (AD)
• Electricity Generators (combustion plant with an aggregated rated thermal input of 1 MW or more at a single site)

In this document these changes are collectively referred to as “the new activities”.

Sewage Sludge (schedule 18; recovery of waste by application to land for the purpose of soil improvement)

A published review of legislation and guidance relevant to the storage and spreading of sludge to land in 2016^[1] indicated that a number of changes were needed to improve the regulation of this activity. These changes, now part of the amendments made by the 2025 Regulations, include: incorporating relevant parts of the Safe Sludge Matrix into law; adding a “Fit and Proper Person” test for authorised persons; establishing a single regulatory system for organic waste to land activities; and tighter regulatory powers for SEPA.

Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (schedule 26; other emissions activities)

Although carbon capture for geological storage is already a regulated activity when carried out at the same site as an installation regulated under Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (PPC), there is a need to extend the scope so that other related activities, likely to become more important as part of Scotland’s just transition, are regulated similarly. This means that activities involving carbon capture and storage need to be captured under the Regulations regardless of whether they relate to an installation that is already regulated under PPC or not, and must now extend to other activities including utilisation of captured carbon dioxide. This will provide a level playing field for these industrial activities that share very similar environmental risks. These other activities include carbon capture removal technologies like Direct Air Capture, carbon capture and utilisation plant and carbon capture plant for the purpose of storing carbon dioxide. In this document these activities are referred to using the acronym CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage).

Non-waste anaerobic digestion (schedule 26; other emissions activities)

The 2025 Regulations bring non-waste anaerobic digestion (AD), which is currently not regulated, into scope of the 2018 Regulations so that it is regulated in the same way as anaerobic digestion that uses waste as a feedstock. This is because the processes, regardless of feedstock, present the same environmental risks. The non-waste AD sector has also recently been growing in size in Scotland.

Electricity Generators (combustion plant with an aggregated rated thermal input of 1 MW or more at a single site) (schedule 26; other emissions activities)

The 2025 Regulations bring electricity generators with an aggregated rated thermal input of 1 MW (1 MWth) or more at a single site, which are currently not regulated, into scope of the 2018 Regulations so that they will be regulated in the same way as electricity generators >1MWth input. This is because aggregations of smaller generators at a single site present the same environmental risks as one (or more) larger generators with a similar overall thermal input power rating. Generators ≥1MWth are already regulated as medium combustion plant and will already be subject to stricter emission limits from 2029. The 2025 Regulations also bring regulation of generators in Scotland in line with that in England and Wales.