ChemRegs Newsletter – February 2024
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
The UK government has announced that a UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will be implemented
by 2027. CBAM, also known as the Carbon Border Tax, is intended to impose a tax on the importation of certain products.
The issue driving this is climate change and the UK government’s aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which would mean reducing emissions by two-thirds before 2035. However, as long as less stringent climate policies exist in other countries, there is a risk of so-called ‘carbon leakage’. Carbon leakage occurs when companies based in the UK move carbon intensive production abroad to countries where less stringent climate policies are in place than in the UK, or when UK products get replaced by more carbon intensive imports.
CBAM will be used to discourage manufacturers relocating their production of carbon intensive products to countries with more relaxed environmental regulations, such as allowing coal powered energy to be used in the manufacturing process and thus avoiding the costs of emission reduction measures. CBAM will place a price on the carbon emissions of goods brought into the UK/EU to bring the carbon price on those goods in line with goods manufactured within the UK/EU.
Initially, the UK CBAM will place a carbon price on some of the most emissions intensive industrial goods imported to the UK from the aluminium, cement, ceramics, fertiliser, glass, hydrogen, iron and steel sectors.
However, it is the intention for CBAM to apply to most sectors, including chemicals. The chemical sector is the largest industrial energy consumer and the third largest industry subsector in terms of direct CO2 emissions. This is largely because around half of the chemical subsector’s energy input is consumed as feedstock – fuel used as a raw material input rather than as a source of energy.
For example, ammonia is a carbon intensive chemical. The traditional, cheap way of making ammonia is to strip hydrogen from natural gas using steam (producing CO2 as a by-product), and then combine that hydrogen with nitrogen from the air at high pressure and temperatures of hundreds of degrees Celsius.
China is the world’s leading producer of ammonia. In 2023, the production of ammonia in China was estimated at around 43 million tonnes. This was followed by Russia, the United States, and India, each producing an estimated 14 tonnes.
The demand for these chemicals is set to grow in the future. The CBAM will radically change where and how chemicals are made, substituted, and consumed.
Further details on the design and delivery of a UK CBAM will be subject to consultation in 2024 and more information can be found here:
Asbestos
The HSE has launched a new campaign called ‘Asbestos: Your Duty’ to improve the understanding of what the legal duty to manage asbestos involves. Buildings that people use in their daily lives, such as workplaces, schools and hospitals are the focus of this new campaign to keep people safe from asbestos.
The HSE wants anyone with responsibilities for buildings to do everything they must do to comply with the law and prevent exposure to this dangerous substance, which was widely used in post-war construction before it was completely from construction 25 years ago. Asbestos may still be present in buildings built before 2000.
The legal duty to manage asbestos covers a wide range of buildings such as museums, schools, hospitals, and places of worship, as well as workplaces like offices and factories.
Businesses and organisations responsible for premises built before the turn of the century, and especially those between 1950 and 1980 when the use of asbestos in construction was at its peak, must carry out the necessary checks and understand their legal responsibilities.
People who visit or work in these buildings will not be exposed if asbestos is properly contained. But it can become dangerous when disturbed or damaged. The HSE will check how asbestos is managed when visiting these buildings to make sure those responsible for managing asbestos risks have the right arrangements in place.
A new range of free resources have been developed to support those with the legal duty. Updated information, new templates (including an asbestos management plan template), and explanatory videos can be found on the HSE website:
Many businesses are unaware if they are the dutyholder, so the HSE created an online quiz to help people identify if they have a legal duty to manage asbestos. A ‘where asbestos hides’ poster has also been produced to highlight the most common locations asbestos can be found and can be bought from the HSE bookshop at:
Workplace Transport
A recent safety alert by the HSE highlights the continuing need for vigilance in the workplace when vehicles, especially large vehicles that are to be loaded or unloaded, come into the workplace.
The safety alert relates to a new modification on lorries fitted with stabilisers (e.g a builders merchants lorry which delivers large bags of sand). The new stabilisers have killed three people since 2019, hence the safety alert.
Although the hazards of loading and unloading are known to most organisations, successful safe systems of work can become outdated and corners can be cut. Especially if there have been no incidents for a number of years.
To give a very simple overview of how a serious injury or death can occur during loading and unloading, it is helpful to keep in mind that the deaths and injuries involving large vehicles in the workplace are usually caused by the following activities:
- Vehicle movements. Especially reversing (workers can be reversed over, and crushed against walls, machinery etc).
- Falls from vehicles. Where the driver goes on to the back of the vehicle to adjust strapping or rearrange a load. If the driver loses balance they can fall off and land on their head with tragic consequences.
- Loading or unloading. Too many deaths and injuries occur in the workplace because someone (either the driver, unloader, or passer by) is hit by a forklift truck, falling cargo, or something during the loading and unloading process.
It is sobering fact that the most common types of injury and death at work are still falls from height, being hit by vehicles, and crush injuries. These hazards are all present in all industries, but seem to be concentrated into one place when a large vehicle comes into the workplace. Recently a major bus operator and a cleaning firm have been prosecuted after a worker was killed at a bus depot by a reversing vehicle.
There is a wealth of helpful advice and suggestions to avoid this happening at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/workplacetransport/about.htm
Paint Packaging
Paints, printing inks, adhesives, and related materials used to be mainly solvent-borne and based on flammable liquids. However, the industry has since moved significantly to more water-borne products to satisfy environmental, health, and climate change concerns.
Many of these solvent-borne products can benefit from an exemption in the transport of dangerous goods regulations (up to 450 L) from classification as flammable due to their viscosity (see ADR/RID 2.2.3.1.5).
The solvent-borne products can also benefit from an exemption (up to 5 L) from needing UN-approved packaging when transported in certain configurations such as pallets or combination packaging via special packing provision PP1 in packing instruction P001 of ADR and RID.
The newer water-borne products were generally non-hazardous for transport with lower safety concerns due to their lack of flammability. Unfortunately, some of the preservatives, added at very small levels to protect the products from spoilage, are now becoming classified due to environmental hazards. As a result, the newer water-borne products are now being regulated as dangerous goods for transport as UN 3077 and UN 3082 (environmentally hazardous in Class 9)
Special provision 375 currently exempts packages containing small amounts (i.e. packages or inner packagings containing ≤ 5 L / 5 kg) of UN 3082 and UN 3077 from all requirements of ADR/RID other than certain general packing provisions of section 4.1.1.
UN-approved packaging required to carry these products in quantities above 5 L is not yet available and/or appropriate for all product types. They are not well suited to the paint industry due to the type of closure used, which allows the product to be opened for tinting and re-closed for further transport.
Plastic pails/drums in sizes of 5, 10, 20, 25, and 30 L are typically used by do-it-yourself consumers, painting contractors, and industrial customers and are transported in very high volumes. These products have been traditionally marketed in larger plastic or tinplate pails/drums because the user needs larger amounts for a particular task and does not want to dispose of multiple smaller empty packs. UN versions of such pails/drums, even where available (many plastic pails/drums are only certified for solids), are difficult for retailers to remove the lid for tinting and then re-close. Retailers must open the lid to add colouring agents to the paint base, and then re-close it without compromising the packaging.
To address the short-term difficulties in obtaining suitable UN-approved packaging, a transitional measure was adopted into ADR/RID 2023 in 1.6.1.51 for entry into force on 1 January 2023. This temporary derogation allows adhesives, paint and paint related materials, printing inks and printing ink related materials and resin solutions assigned to UN 3082 containing certain named preservatives to be transported by road in non-UN-approved packaging, when carried in quantities of 30 L or less per packaging in certain configurations such as pallets or combination packagings. The derogation lasts from 1 January 2023 until 30 June 2025.
The current transitional measure specifically mentions three preservatives whose reclassification under the 15th Adaptation to Technical Progress (ATP) of the EU Regulation on Classification, Labelling and Packaging of substances (CLP) led to the identification of certain water-based paints and printing inks as environmentally hazardous (Class 9) mixtures (primarily due to the high ‘M-factors’ allocated to these substances).
The three preservatives mentioned in 1.6.1.51 are ,5-dichloro-2-octyl-2H-isothiazol-3-one (DCOIT), octhilinone (OIT), and zinc pyrithione (ZnPT). Additional (re-)classifications of highly toxic substances under CLP are now foreseen which will result in further mixtures falling into classification as Class 9, even though they contain very low levels of the substances in question. This includes consideration of the M-factors that are applied to the hazard classifications for preservatives.
The European Council of the Paint, Printing Ink, and Artist’s Colours Industry (CEPE) is now requesting an extension (until June 2027) to the current RID/ADR transitional measure to address the lack of appropriate UN-approved plastic packaging. CEPE also requested that the exemption in the ADR and RID rules to be modified to apply to a wider range of paints and printing inks to address further substance harmonised (re-)classifications under the CLP legislation.
The World Coatings Council (WCC) has addressed this same issue through a series of proposals submitted to the last four sessions of the UN Sub-Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods.
These proposals will now be discussed at the next UN meetings in March and June.
For more information on anything in this Newsletter, please contact us at info@chemregs.co.uk