Scenario: an FDI factory is nearing completion and its engineering team holds four different environmental documents — an approved environmental impact assessment, a wastewater discharge license, a hazardous-waste source-owner book and a confirmation of completed environmental protection works — and asks which of them must still be maintained once the plant runs. Since the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13, all of them merge into a single instrument: the environmental license. This article clarifies its integrated scope, conditions and validity.
What the environmental license replaces
Article 40 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13 designs the environmental license as an integrated permit: in one document, the licensing authority decides simultaneously on wastewater discharge, air emissions, noise and vibration limits, hazardous and ordinary solid waste management, scrap import as production input (if any) and the project’s other environmental requirements. The investor no longer applies separately for a wastewater discharge license, an air emission license, a hazardous-waste source-owner registration book or a confirmation of completed environmental protection works as before 2022. The subjects required to hold the license are defined in Article 39: Group I investment projects, Group II projects of pollution-prone types or with environmental sensitivity factors, and operating facilities of equivalent nature. Licensing authority under Article 41: the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment for centrally appraised projects; provincial People’s Committees for most industrial park factories.
The substantive conditions behind the dossier
Three substantive conditions decide whether an application passes. First, the project’s environmental legal base must be complete: an approved environmental impact assessment (for EIA projects) whose commitments have been implemented. Second, the waste-treatment works must be built to design and trial-operated with monitoring results meeting national technical environmental standards — the trial-operation monitoring data are the dossier’s central evidence. Third, the waste management system must be ready: compliant hazardous-waste storage, contracts with licensed treatment units, and an environmental incident prevention and response plan. A frequent failure is filing before the treatment works have completed a full trial cycle, which gets the dossier returned and drags the commercial operation date with it.
Validity, renewal and amendment
Clause 4, Article 40 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13 fixes the license term: 7 years for Group I investment projects and equivalent pre-2022 operating facilities; 10 years for other subjects; a shorter term may be granted at the investor’s request. On expiry, re-issuance must be obtained before the old license lapses to avoid a legal gap in operation. Expanding capacity, changing production technology or adding a discharge point triggers the amendment duty — running the expansion on the old license is effectively operating without a license for that part. Investors should put the environmental license renewal on the same reminder system as the investment registration certificate and sectoral licenses: a 7–10 year term makes it very easy to forget in short management cycles.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the integrated environmental license cover, and which permits does it replace?
Under Article 40 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13, the environmental license bundles: wastewater discharge requirements, air emission requirements, noise and vibration limits, hazardous and ordinary waste management, scrap import conditions (if any), and other environmental requirements. Once issued, it replaces the former component permits — the wastewater discharge license, the air emission license, the hazardous-waste source-owner registration book and the confirmation of completed environmental protection works. None of those needs to be maintained in parallel anymore.
A factory operating on old permits — must it switch to the integrated environmental license, and by when?
Not immediately. Component permits issued before 1 January 2022 (wastewater discharge permits, water exploitation permits, hazardous-waste management confirmations under the old mechanism) remain valid until their stated expiry. The duty to move to the integrated environmental license arises when the old permit expires, when the facility changes scale or discharge content requiring re-issuance, or when the authority consolidates at the next licensing round, under Articles 39 to 41 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13. A facility that falls under the license requirement but never held any component permit is already in violation when discharging without one — there is no transition grace period for it.
What does an environmental license dossier contain, and is it filed with the Ministry or the province?
The core dossier: a request letter for the environmental license, a license proposal report (describing discharge sources, treatment works and the monitoring programme), and the project’s/facility’s legal file, under Articles 40 and 41 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13 and Decree 08/2022/ND-CP. On authority: the Ministry level (the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment after the merger) licenses Group I projects and specific inter-regional cases; provincial People’s Committees license most Group II and III projects — so an ordinary in-park FDI factory files at provincial level. Filing with the wrong authority is the error that gets dossiers returned at intake, so step one is cross-checking project group and authority under Article 41 before drafting.
How long is an environmental license valid, and how is it renewed?
Under clause 4, Article 40 of the Law on Environmental Protection 72/2020/QH13: 7 years for Group I projects and facilities, and for pre-1 January 2022 facilities of Group I equivalence; 10 years for the remaining cases. On expiry, a facility that keeps discharging must apply for re-issuance before the old license lapses — there is no automatic renewal. During the license term, any change to licensed content (scale expansion, new discharge sources, treatment technology changes) requires an amendment procedure rather than waiting for re-issuance.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council