(T.E.T)
The government has asked 79 coal-based power plants totalling 20,500-MW near million plus cities in 10 states including Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and UP to install equipment to curb emission of poisonous sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide gases, by this month end, while 517 others have been given timeline relaxations.
According to the revised categorisation of thermal power plants by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), these 79 coal-fired power plants near populated and already polluted cities. Delhi, Chennai, Kota, Greater Mumbai, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada have been marked in the Category-A of the new norms.
The projects are owned by NTPC, Torrent Power, Tata Power, Apraava India and state generating companies of Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.
Projects in this category that fail to comply with the timeline will have to pay a penalty of 10 paise per unit of electricity generated upto 180 days of non-compliance, 15 paise between 181 days to 365 days and 20 paise per unit after 366 days, as per the notification issued by the environment ministry in April this year.
All thermal power plants have been categorised into three groups-category A are plants within the 10 kilometre radius of the National Capital region and cities with a million plus population; category B plants are in the 10 kilometre radius of critically polluted areas or non-attainment cities; the remaining power plants are category C.
The remaining 449 coal fired power plants have been categorised in Category C that are required to install SOx and NOx control gears by December 2024. The penalties for this category projects ranges between 0.05 paise to 10 paise.
