What non-compliance costs: offences and penalties behind the Clean Air Regulations

Enforcing the Clean Air Regulations 2014 — Part 4 of 5. A practical series for regulators and compliance staff, drawn from the DOE CEMS Guidelines (Version 8, 2025), which we helped develop.

The earlier parts of this series set out the duties: what “compliant” actually means under Reg 17(3) (Part 1), how a valid average is built and when a reading counts (Part 2), and the notification clocks that start when something goes wrong (Part 3). This part covers the other end of the line — what happens when those duties are breached, and why the stakes rose sharply in 2024.

The offence behind an exceedance

A CEMS exceedance isn’t just a bad data point; it’s evidence of a statutory offence. The Clean Air Regulations 2014 are made under the Environmental Quality Act 1974 (EQA), and the substantive prohibition sits in Section 22 of the EQA:

No person shall, unless licensed, emit or discharge any environmentally hazardous substances, pollutants or wastes into the atmosphere in contravention of the acceptable conditions specified under section 21.

Those “acceptable conditions” are, in practice, the Emission Limit Values and monitoring obligations that the Clean Air Regulations and your licence impose. When your stack runs over its limit — a daily average above the ELV, or a half-hourly average above twice the ELV — that is precisely the contravention Section 22 describes. The CEMS is what makes it visible, continuously and on the record.

What it costs now

For most of the EQA’s life the maximum fine for an air-pollution offence under Section 22 was RM100,000. The Environmental Quality (Amendment) Act 2024 (Act A1712) — assented on 27 May 2024 and in force from 7 July 2024 — changed that picture substantially, raising the ceiling tenfold and, for the first time, setting a floor.

Beyond the headline fine

Section 22 is the substantive offence, but it isn’t the only exposure. Two others matter for any CEMS operator:

Licence-condition breaches. A prescribed-premises licence carries conditions — including your monitoring and reporting obligations. Failing to comply with them is a separate offence, and the 2024 amendment raised its penalty to a fine of not less than RM25,000 and up to RM250,000, or imprisonment up to five years, or both (the previous ceiling was RM25,000 and two years). The CEMS duties in Part 3 — notifying DOE of excess emissions and monitor failures — live in exactly this territory.

Ignoring a DOE notice. Where the Director General serves a notice requiring you to cease an act or take a measure, continuing regardless triggers the daily continuing-offence fine — the cost compounds for every day of inaction. Notices are not suggestions.

Compounding — the off-ramp that just narrowed

Many environmental matters are resolved not by trial but by compounding — DOE offering a fixed sum in lieu of prosecution. This used to be a soft landing: the maximum compound was RM2,000, often trivial against the cost of compliance. The 2024 amendment removed that comfort. A compound can now reach up to 50% of the maximum fine for the offence — so for a Section 22 air-pollution matter, potentially hundreds of thousands of ringgit — and DOE can issue no compound without the written approval of the Public Prosecutor. The economics of “pay the fine and move on” have changed.

Your CEMS data is the evidence

Here is the through-line of this whole series: the same continuous record that can convict you is the record that protects you. A properly run CEMS — reporting valid data, kept honest by its quality-assurance programme, with excursions notified on time — is your best evidence of good-faith compliance if a question ever reaches a regulator or a court. The discipline the earlier parts describe isn’t bureaucratic box-ticking; it’s what stands between an isolated excursion and a prosecution. With the penalties now an order of magnitude higher, that record is worth more than ever.

The takeaway

After July 2024, an air-pollution offence under the EQA 1974 carries up to RM1 million, five years, a RM10,000 floor, and a daily fine while it continues — and the cheap compound is gone. For anyone operating a CEMS, the message is simple: the system isn’t there to catch you out, it’s there to keep you demonstrably on the right side of a line that now costs far more to cross.

Want confidence that your monitoring, data and reporting would stand up to scrutiny? Talk to us — we help facilities keep a clean, defensible compliance record, using the same DOE CEMS Guidelines we helped write.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. Penalty figures reflect the Environmental Quality Act 1974 as amended by the Environmental Quality (Amendment) Act 2024 (Act A1712, in force 7 July 2024); for obligations and the current statutory text specific to your facility, refer to the EQA 1974, the Environmental Quality (Clean Air) Regulations 2014, and the DOE CEMS Guidelines, or speak with us directly.