The saga of regulating India’s thermal power emissions

• India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has delayed the deadline for thermal plants to comply with sulphur dioxide (SO2) emission norms by three years.

• The revised emission norms for Indian thermal plants were revised in December 2015 after public consultations, and all thermal plants were expected to comply by December 2017.

• The new norms tightened the prevalent norms for particulate matter emissions and introduced norms for other emissions, including SO2.

• The debate shifted from implementing flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) technology to issues such as scheduling FGD installations due to their long gestation periods and potential costs.

• The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) and CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute questioned the need for uniform norms across the country and proposed a phased-out of their implementation till 2035.

• The MoEFCC diluted some norms and extended the deadlines for compliance multiple times, leading to different deadlines for thermal plants in different locations and types of emissions.

• The final deadline for compliance with other emissions, including particulate matter emissions, was December 31, 2024, with many plants having to comply from December 31 of 2022 and 2023.

• Many thermal plants have already tendered contracts to install FGDs, but not at a pace required to meet their deadlines before the latest notification.

• The new timelines for compliance may lead to plants with FGDs not running them due to increased generation costs and pushing them down the preferred list of generators.

• The institutional, environmental, health, and financial costs of doing so are likely to be high, and it’s unclear whether the right lessons will be learned from this saga.