Coal-fired power plants get more time for upgrade

NEW DELHI: The government looks set to extend the December 2017 deadline for coal-fired power stations to meet stricter emission norms, allowing time for them to consider replacing retro plants with modern units that release much less particulate and gaseous pollutants into the air.
According to power minister Piyush Goyal, the environment ministry is on board to consider an extension of the deadline that was set in 2015.“I don’t want that we import equipment (to meet deadline for meeting emission norms). We realised after discussions that it would put more burden on the consumer and they will have to pay more for electricity,” Goyal said.
“We took up the issue with environment ministry. They agreed with us that deadline should be extended so that old polluting plants can be replaced with super-critical super-efficient plants. This will reduce pollution to just 10% of the existing levels of (emission by) these old plants,” Goyal said.
The environment ministry had in December 2015 laid down norms for coal-burning power plants to reduce emissions of particulate matter (PM10), sulphur dioxide SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) with a view to improving the air quality around the generation units.
Industry estimates put the cost of retrofitting at Rs 1.5 crore per mega watt. According to present norms, generators are expected to pass on this cost to consumers, which would raise tariffs.
Another hurdle slowing down progress on this front is that domestic capacity for manufacturing the new emission-limiting equipment is approximately 15GW a year against a demand of 40GW per annum for meeting SO2 norms alone.
The minister has already asked NTPC to replace old plants with an aggregate capacity of 11,000MW at a cost of Rs50,000 crore in the next 3-4 years. The company board has approved the plan.