Compliance of environmental standards for thermal power plants in India – costs and roadmap
Student name: Ms Medha Kapoor
Guide: Dr Gopal K Sarangi
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Ms Kapardhi Bhardwaj
Abstract: In order to combat increasing air pollution crisis and consequently increasing incidence and prevalence of respiratory and cardiopulmonary morbidity and mortality, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEF&CC) notified new environmental norms for thermal power plants in the country and mandated compliance. Compliance can be achieved by retrofitting power plants with pollution control technologies (PCT). MOEF&CC directed Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to notify the Indian thermal power fleet with a time-bound retrofit plan from 2018 to 2022. The objective of the study is to analyse CPCB’s plan of retrofits to understand how the prioritization of power plants has been done in the 7 year period, emphasize on the debate around PM abatement and develop a parallel plan for retrofits in order to maximise the impact by prioritizing poor performing plants in the most efficient, economically viable and timely manner possible. The research is a quantitative study where key data points such as age, pollution status, retrofit plan etc of the thermal power plants have been analysed in Microsoft Excel to generate statistically significant results. The results indicate that there are many plants which have surpassed their average useful life which may be contributing more to air pollution, lack of transparency and clarity over the CPCB retrofit plan and prioritization of non-polluting capacity/plants to be retrofitted first than the polluting capacity. This paves way for a need of a sound alternate action plan which weighs cost of generation against cost of abatement - Impact on the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) due to adoption of pollution control technology, assessing the viability of retrofitting while being cognizant of factors such as remaining useful plant life, Plant Load Factor (PLF), operational days, Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), stressed, distressed assets etc.
Keywords: Thermal power plants, retrofit plan, Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP), Flue gas Delsuphurizer (FGD), Particulate Matter (PM).
