The Environmental Protection Act requires that the best available techniques not entailing excessive cost (BATNEEC) are used to achieve the Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO).
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) introduced for the first time in 1976 the concept of Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO).
The RCEP had serious concerns that removal of pollution from air could result in increased pollution of land and water. In this background the RCEP suggested optimum combination of available methods to limit damage to environment as a whole instead of proceeding separately on a medium by medium basis such as air, water and land.
According to the RCEP, BPEO focuses on the conservation and protection of the environment across the mediums of land, water and air. For a given set of objectives, the BPEO procedure adopts the option that provides the most benefit or the least damage to the environment as a whole, at acceptable cost, in the long term as well as the short term.
