Environment ministry’s latest amendment gives coal-based thermal power stations complete license to pollute

April 7, 2021

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has strongly criticized the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s (MoEF&CC) latest amendment to 2015 notification on stringent emission norms for India’s coal-based thermal power sector – the new amendment, says CSE, “will give these already polluting thermal power plants (TPPs) a license to pollute indefinitely”. Norms to limit pollutants from TPPs were announced in 2015, and were expected to be adopted by 2017. But the industry managed to delay implementation to 2022. It is 2021 now: with just a few months to go before the deadline, a mere one-third of the plants have taken any serious steps to comply with the norms. Says Sunita Narain, director general, CSE: “Instead of working to ensure implementation, the ministry has chosen to extend the deadline further, allowing a majority of the plants to pollute for another three to four years. However, extension is not the only matter to be worried about. What makes this a fatally flawed notification is that the deterrence provided in it for non-compliance actually gives the polluters a license to pollute.”

Source: CSE