Environmental Permits & Compliance

Accurate monitoring of emissions is critical for regulatory compliance and reducing environmental impact. Tap into ClearStandard’s data to clean up your reporting processes and reduce operational risk.

Compliance. It’s still complicated.

Navigating the landscape of environmental permits, regulations, and corporate sustainability goals present significant challenges for companies with complex operations. Failure to effectively manage these aspects can result in hefty fines, penalties, and brand damage.

It has always been that way, and the reality is things are not going to get easier for businesses. The introduction of new regulations and tightening of existing ones further complicate compliance. To stay ahead of the risks, it’s necessary for businesses to implement a proactive compliance strategy driven by accurate data and reporting. It is simply stated but difficult to implement, largely due to the lack of timely and quality data.

Data and permit compliance

Environmental permits often necessitate corporations to disclose their emissions and discharges, encompassing wastewater discharge, air pollutants, or hazardous waste. The significance of utility data in this context cannot be overstated, as it serves as the key input for determining these emissions.

A manufacturing corporation, for example, may operate a facility that produces electronic components. The facility generates hazardous waste, including chemicals used in the manufacturing process, such as solvents, acids, and heavy metals. The corporation holds an environmental permit that limits how much hazardous waste it can produce and dispose of.

Practically, waste volumes are determined by closely monitoring and recording the inputs and outputs at each production stage. This includes tracking the quantities of raw materials and chemicals used, the production volumes of finished goods, and the by-products generated. By integrating and analyzing this data within an environmental management system, manufacturers can accurately calculate the total waste volumes, identify trends, and implement strategies for waste reduction and compliance with regulatory limits.

This waste volume determination, however, provides only theoretical results that must be verified with the disposed waste volume. The utility data from the disposal contractor is used for verification and reporting to prove that the processes are within the limits of the environmental permit.

Automating data collection for permit compliance

The business challenge in collecting this utility information lies in the manual process of collecting the bills of the disposal contractors. This is often a manual process where someone downloads the digital invoice, takes the data from it, and transfers it into an Excel spreadsheet or an environmental management system. This is a time-intensive task, human error-prone, and a source of concern for audits and assurance processes. The potential risks of this manual process underscore the need for a more reliable and efficient solution.

ClearStandard solves the data dilemma by hooking your business systems up to data feeds directly from your utility accounts. Moreover, you can improve the accuracy of your reporting because ClearStandard lets you map meters to production lines for more timely usage data.

Source: energy.gov