Air pollutant emissions affect air quality, can form acids in the environment, or drive excessive nutrient accumulation (eutrophication) in ecosystems. They can also impact human health.

As an operator of certain industrial facilities, you must therefore regularly declare the air pollutant emissions from your facilities to the competent authority.

The emission declaration must be submitted to the competent authority in electronic form every 4 years (by 31.05 of the year following the declaration year).

The emission declaration contains information on relevant air pollutants, i.e. on the

• type,
• quantity and
• spatial and temporal distribution of emissions.

The Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) provides information on which companies must submit an emissions declaration.

As an operator of certain industrial and agricultural facilities requiring a permit, you are required to submit an emission declaration on a regular basis (§ 27 BImSchG).

Please note the following requirements:

• Installations requiring a permit are defined in the Fourth Ordinance on the Implementation of the Federal Immission Control Act and can be viewed in Annex 1 of the Ordinance (4th BImSchV).
• You are not required to declare as the operator of a plant listed in § 1 of the 11th BImSchV.
• Operators of installations requiring a permit who have operated their installations during the declaration period are obliged to submit an emissions declaration (Section 4 (3) of the 11th BImSchV).
  • If the plant is commissioned, shut down or temporarily not operated during the declaration period, the declaration period includes the parts of the calendar year in which the plant was operated.
• As the operator of an installation requiring a permit, you may apply to the competent authority to be exempted from the obligation to submit an emissions declaration if, in individual cases, your installation is likely to emit air pollutants only to a minor extent (Section 6 of the 11th BImSchV).

Submit emissions declaration online:

In order to simplify the electronic reporting of environmental data, you as a company subject to the reporting obligation have to submit your data online via "Betriebliche Umweltdatenberichterstattung" (BUBE). BUBE is operated as a cooperation of the 16 federal states and the federal government under the Administrative Agreement on the Establishment and Operation of Environmental Information Systems (VKoopUIS).