Permits for environmental technology purposes in aquaculture

The proposed regulations provide for annual allocation rounds for permits for environmental technology purposes. Of course, this does not mean that the regulations which are now presumably adopted will apply unchanged for a number of years. It is not an extensive process to change the regulations, and we must assume that this will happen as experience is gained with the system. The possibility to change the system based on acquired experience is a major advantage of this arrangement compared to the previous development permits.

Section 7 of the proposed regulations establishes the environmental requirements that must be met through the technological solution that the applicant undertakes to use. In reality, the provision contains minimum requirements for the technological solution in that the applicants must be sure that the requirements can be met by the technology they choose. It is therefore important that these requirements are “correctly” designed in relation to what can be achieved technologically and based on the goal of contributing to technological development in the aquaculture industry.

The proposed requirement is that eggs and free-swimming stages of salmon lice should not be released and that 60% of waste feed and sludge from the fish be collected. The requirement is intended to be technology neutral, and it is therefore designed as a requirement for the locality. This means, for example, that the fish farmer has the opportunity to use an efficient closed technology or a technology that otherwise ensures efficient collection so that salmon lice and sludge (60%) do not leave the site.

The consultation memos comment on both of these requirements. With regard to the requirement for zero discharge of salmon lice, it is pointed out that this is a requirement that has a limiting effect on the applicant’s choice of technology. The question has therefore been raised as to whether the requirement can be set at 0.1 lice per fish, which corresponds to the requirement that provides a basis for exceptional growth in the traffic light system. Then the applicants will have greater freedom in terms of technology while staying within the lice limit that the legislature has otherwise accepted as unproblematic. The requirement for 60% collection of sludge has also been criticised, both because it is perceived as unclear in terms of content in practice and because it is perceived as inappropriately limiting in terms of technology. Such a general requirement for the collection of sludge is problematic, among other things, because the real need to collect sludge varies greatly from locality to locality. At most of today’s marine locations, discharge of sludge is not an environmental problem.

The draft regulations have also placed great emphasis on the design of the rules for granting permits. It is clear here that the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries wants to avoid the extensive and time-consuming case processing that has been experienced in the cases of development permits. There is a big difference here in that the granting of development permits has a different financial value since the permits could be converted into ordinary permits. There are two options in the proposed regulations; allocation by “innovation points” or allocation by auction. The weakness of both of these options is that they are poorly designed to prioritise the innovation projects that will have the greatest potential to contribute to positive commercial technology development. It should only have a limited significance when choosing between projects that have the same number of “innovation points”. In my opinion, there is good reason to question whether consideration of the potential for technology development is sufficiently emphasised. It also appears to be inappropriate to award permits that will provide technology development to the applicant who will pay the most money to the state at an auction. It seems more appropriate that the applicant undertakes to invest the auction amount in the development of technology.

The draft regulations also contain special appeal rules. I have no objections to the appointment of a separate complaints board, provided that it is provided with sufficient case processing resources to solve of the complaints. I am more critical of the proposal to limit the board of appeal’s discretion through an imprecise provision that there must be a “substantial failure or deficiency” in the exercise of discretion. Complaint processing concerns the review of specific cases, and it is important that the appeal board has the opportunity to overturn the decisions where they find the complaint justified. Limiting this authority in advance can turn out to be unfortunate because you cannot know which cases will come up. And if discretion is to be limited, it should at least be specified that the appeal board can react to unfair discrimination.

Finally, it is worth noting that the draft regulation does not contain the rule that was included in the previous salmon allocation regulation Section 23b fourth paragraph on development permits. In this provision, it is required that the project be properly documented, and it is specified that: “Knowledge must be shared so that it benefits the entire industry.” Such a requirement is therefore not placed on the new environmental technology permits, and basically one must assume that all information about the technology and technology development will be trade secrets belonging to the applicant. For the applicants, it will be important here to deal with questions about patents and other intellectual property rights deliberately before the application is submitted and possibly set clear requirements for the Directorate of Fisheries so that, for example, there is no risk that patent rights are lost as a result of the public processing of the application.