India wants more electricity and needs more power plants to get it, but the government is not enforcing the pollution standards it needs to on these plants.
The result is that north India’s air is becoming more toxic with little hope for improvement, unless the government cracks down on polluting power plants and enforces a variety of other pollution-control measures.
India’s sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions – due to burning of coal – increased 50 percent, while China’s emissions fell 75 percent since 2007, according to a study by the University of Maryland and US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released on 9 November.
Globally, China and India are the largest consumers of coal, and India will surpass China as the world’s largest emitter of SO2.
The share of coal in electricity generation in India is about 72 percent, and has remained largely the same over the last three years, according to this reply to the Lok Sabha on 10 August.
“India’s failure to implement emission control standards for coal-fired power plants is leading to severe air pollution levels,” Aishwarya Sudhir, an independent researcher on air quality, told IndiaSpend.
Delhi has 13 coal-fired power plants within a 300-kilometre radius operating with no emission controls to regulate SO2 and nitrogen dioxide that contribute to the surge in particulate matter level, Sudhir said.
Burning of coal leads to large SO2 emissions, a toxic air pollutant, that forms sulfate aerosols, a major contributor to the current haze in India and China. The pollutant causes over one million premature deaths every year, the Maryland study said.
Emission of SO2 concentrations have increased in India between 2005 and 2016, largely attributed to coal-fired power plants in the states of Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, the report said. The “hotspots” have also increased on the west coast.
The ozone monitoring instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite reflects the change in SO2 concentrations in India and China between 2005 and 2016.
The decrease in SO2 levels is attributed to stricter pollution control measures, shift to non coal-based energy sources and the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy.
China’s biggest success has been the installation of basic pollution abatement equipment on a majority (95 percent) of thermal power plants compared to only 10 percent of Indian power plants, IndiaSpend reported on 21 November 2016.
“India’s increased sulfur dioxide emissions are not causing as many health or haze problems as they do in China because the largest emission sources are not in the most densely populated area of India,” according to Can Li, an associate research scientist in the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“However, as demand for electricity grows in India, the impact may worsen.”
About 13 percent or 2,457 villages of 18,452 unelectrified villages are yet to be electrified as on 14 November, according to government’s real-time GARV dashboard.
Power plants or combustion of coal are not the only factors leading to toxic air in Delhi and its surrounding areas.
Reducing burning of straw or stubble and other biomass in neighbouring states of Delhi could improve air quality by 90 percent, IndiaSpend reported on 17 October.
NASA released satellite images of active crop fires in Punjab and surrounding areas on 25 October, followed by skies covered with thick and smog on 8 November, indicating rise in pollution levels in north India, IndiaSpend reported.
China has instituted regional air quality regulations to ensure that air pollution is addressed jointly across city and state boundaries. It has developed a network of 1,500 air quality-monitoring stations in over 900 cities compared to 39 in India covering 23 cities.
Monsoon was the only relief for Delhiites as they could breathe easy in July and August as air quality index recorded safe levels.
“Delhi’s Graded Response Action Plan has clearly failed to make any difference to the severe pollution levels being witnessed by the citizens of Delhi,” Sudhir said.
“The government had enough time to implement GRAP and ensure inter-state coordination. Implementing GRAP and addressing pollution at the source are not mutually exclusive. If long-term solutions are not in place, episodic action to mitigate the problem will not help as most agencies continue to pass the buck with no accountability to implement action plans across the region.”
(Mallapur is an analyst with IndiaSpend. This article was originally published on IndiaSpend and has been republished with permission.)
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