India opening up coal sector but 70 pc plants do not meet emission standards, says CSE

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 21

While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced major structural reforms for the coal sector, including commercial mining in coal on a revenue-sharing basis, to boost India’s COVID-hit economy, leading environmental NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) claims 70 per cent of coal-fired power stations may not meet environmental norms by the 2022 deadline.

Coal-fired power plants are some of the most polluting industries and the sector must meet the environmental norms to ensure ‘the right to breathe in clean air’, says the Centre for Science and Environment.

Seeking urgent action, CSE director-general Sunita Narain said the Environment Ministry must issue directions and impose hefty fines on plants which clearly would not meet the 2022 deadline, along with high penalties/closure notices for non-compliant Delhi-NCR airshed plants, at least for peak winter pollution months.

“The Environment Ministry should immediately decide regarding the older plants which cannot meet the already lax emission standards. Either they must be retired/refurbished to use alternative fuels or move towards using the plants for biomass gasification or ultra-modern municipal waste processing units. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her 2020 Budget speech, had discussed the need to close these plants,” she added.

Notably, India is opening up coal mining to privatisation to revive the economy.

However, coal-fired power plants have to meet stringent new emission norms by 2022, set in December 2015, by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).

“The industry tried to first obstruct and prevaricate on the 2015 standards. The deadline for meeting them was moved from 2017 to 2022. But the sector continues to remain in its state of sloth. With barely two years to go before the deadline hits them, almost 70 per cent of the plants will not meet the emission standards,” says the CSE report ‘Coal-based Power Norms: Where do we stand’ released on Thursday.

The 2015 standards are in line with global regulations. According to rough estimates, their implementation can cut down emissions of PM by 35 per cent, SO2 by 80 per cent, and NOx by 42 per cent. They can also bring down freshwater use by the industry.

The sector, however, has been far from forthcoming in accepting the norms, says the study based on the assessment of the progress in the implementation of environmental norms.

Furthermore, there is a little information in the public domain about compliance with PM or NOx standards and certainly, there is no direction to the thermal power plants that they must meet the crucial water standards, which would make this water-guzzling sector more responsible on its usage.

With 56 per cent of generation capacity being based on it, coal is the mainstay of India’s power sector. Besides being accountable for emissions of pollutants like SO2 etc, the sector is also extremely water-intensive and is responsible for 70 per cent of total freshwater withdrawal by all industries in the country, according to the CSE.

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