Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has strongly criticised the environment ministry’s latest amendment to the 2015 notification on emission norms for coal-based thermal power plants. The amendment was notified on September 5.
The amendment has — once again – favoured power plants by giving them another two years’ extension to meet the standards for sulphur dioxide (SO2). While the deadline for particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) remains the same as per the last notification, there is a blanket extension of deadline for SO2 emissions for coal-based power plants.
In its reports, CSE has highlighted the fact that sulphur dioxide is a criteria pollutant. Typically, background levels of sulphur dioxide in the ambient air of healthy environments are below 2 g/m3. Its presence over 20 g/m3 (24-hour mean) or 500 g/m3 (10-minute mean) can have severely deleterious effects on health.
Recent research has revealed that even a slight increase in sulphur dioxide concentrations in the ambient air affects sensitive groups such as babies, pregnant women and people suffering from asthma or chronic lung diseases. In addition, the pollutant gets accumulated in the air and also converts to secondary particulate matter.
Says Nivit Yadav, programme director, industrial pollution, CSE: “It is ironical that this new notification was issued only two days before the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. Instead of pioneering the movement in spirit, this action could be putting the ‘blue sky’ at stake.”
Yadav adds: “Our analysis shows that till date, only 4 per cent of India’s coal power capacity has installed equipment to control SO2 emissions and another 41 per cent has identified the vendors for supply of the equipment. The remaining 55 per cent of the capacity has not taken any concrete steps to meet the norms even after seven years since the norms were first notified in December 2015.”
Another larger gain by this extension is for the old units that are nearing retirement and are the most polluting owing to lower efficiency of plant operation. The notification allows for such units to keep running until their self-declared period of retirement. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has identified 3,912 MW that is ‘to be decommissioned’, but has not revealed for how long are these plants going to operate without having to meet the norms.
