EMISSION NORMS FOR COAL-BASED THERMAL POWER PLANTS

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Context: Almost seven years since the notification, not even 7 per cent of India’s coal capacity meets the standards issued by the MoEF&CC.

Details:

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), in its 2015 notification, introduced emission norms for coal-based thermal power plants (TPP).
The TPPs were given a deadline of December 2017 to mandatorily comply with the norms for SO2, NOx, PM, Hg and water.
Central Electricity Authority (CEA) — nodal agency under the Ministry of Power to monitor implementation of 2015 norms — only reports on compliance status of SO₂while other parameters go unreported.
The progress of SO₂compliance is measured in terms of the status of installation of flue gas desulfurisation (FGD) unit that removes SO₂ from plant stack.
The lack of information on other parameters has led to the ‘installation of FGD’ becoming the yardstick for compliance with emission norms.
The cost implications and the unavailability of equipment in the case of FGD and demand for location specific SO₂standards, have often been used as ‘reasonable grounds’ to dissuade compliance with emission norms in the past.
These strategies have completely disregarded the possibility of compliance with the other parameters within the pre-fixed deadlines.
With this as a premise, MoEF&CC, vide another notification in March 2021, revised the deadline for meeting the norms.
The revised notification advocated for differentiated deadlines for power plants disaggregated into three categories — Category A, Category B and Category C — based on their locations.
Almost four months untill the deadline, a whopping 47 per cent of 20,637 MW coal power capacity under Category A is still not in a position to commission FGD even in another two years.
Interestingly, unlike the plausible likelihood of violation by huge coal capacity under Category A, a 77 per cent of the coal capacity under Category B is likely to install FGD by 2023. However, further analysis shows the precarious balance that these plants are in with respect to the installation of FGD.
In the case of Category-C plants, 75 per cent of the capacity is likely to meet the norms. Sixteen per cent of the capacity is unlikely to meet the standards by 2024.