Guidance

Monitoring stack emissions: low risk MCPs and specified generators

How to monitor emissions from low risk medium combustion plants (MCPs) and specified generators (SGs).

Applies to England

Documents

Details

This guidance provides a standardised approach to monitoring stack gas emissions from low risk plants regulated under the:

This guidance is for operators of:

  • MCPs and SGs with standard rules and simple bespoke permits
  • other low risk MCPs and SGs
  • MCP installations where the Environment Agency has agreed to the use of this standard

This guidance also provides an approach for calculating the sulphur dioxide (SO2) content of stack gas emitted by MCPs.

Updates to this page

Published 16 February 2021
Last updated 20 January 2026 show all updates
  1. The scope of the guidance has been extended to include MCPs and SGs with simple bespoke permits. For continuous monitoring, the use of MCERTS certified low risk plant monitors has been added. Only MCERTS certified HEMS with a suitable certification range may be used for periodic monitoring.

  2. Clarified in section 10 'If you are following the monitoring approach in this guidance, you must not exceed a expanded measurement uncertainty of ±20% for nitrogen oxides.' and 'When assessing compliance for nitrogen oxides, we will use a fixed expanded measurement uncertainty of ±20%.

  3. Removed reference to MCPD Help and replaced with MCP Returns.

  4. Certified range multiplier changed from 2.5 to 6.5.

  5. First published.

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