Targeting India’s Coal based power plants !!!
India has been reducing air pollution within the country through number of measures. It is doing it as per its own plan and at its own pace. Western countries especially United Kingdom who have been responsible for the World’s sorrows for the late 700 years are trying their level best to pressurize New Delhi to do away with Coal based power plants.
By doing so India will once again be energy starved and fall behind these very countries. So seeing through these games India has worked out its own energy plan, through cheap Coal from within the country and from Australia. Then cheap oil and gas from Russia and increasing the numbers of indigenous Thorium based nuclear power plants in a progressive manner.
Playing the great game it seems American scientists have even worked out which of the India’s power plants are the worst in pollution terms, narrowing it down to 30 units which as per them are responsible for about a quarter of the mortality rates on the Sub continent.
The “ great “ Stanfird University of USA (who asked them in the first place ?) very generously looked at the performance of the Indi’s power plants. “We wanted to see if some power plants were disproportionately driving the mortality burden. Identifying these could move the needle on improving air quality.”
The University spending its own money assessed the impacts of all of the Indian power plants. The researchers then repeated this exercise 510 times, simulating the switching off of one power plant at a time. This was a massive computational task. To speed this up, they utilised spare capacity in the university computing systems.
Each evening, they logged on to set more programmes running overnight. It still took three months before they were able to assimilate the findings.(hopefully they have worked out and identified all pollution causing factories in the United States and Great Britain similarly).
Now their learned scientists say that their hunch that some power plants were more harmful than others proved correct. The impact ranged from one or two extra deaths a year to 670. Importantly, about a quarter of the health burden came from plants that generated just 3% of India’s electricity. The most harmful tended to burn low-quality lignite and emitted high qualities of sulphur pollution but, surprisingly, there was no clear relationship between the age of the power plant and the health damage.
So next they would wish to issue an imperial farman to Indian policy makers to Prioritize action to reduce emissions at the most damaging units, such as deploying pollution control technologies or retiring and replacing their output with zero-emissions electricity, could achieve disproportionately large reductions in mortality.”
The Indian government has revised its regulations to focus on cleaning up power plants near cities with more than 1 million people. Fitting pollution controls takes time and closures lead to power shortages. Greater clean energy investment, at lower capital cost, could help India meet its ambitious clean electricity targets.
Studies carried out by different Indian Organizations have been published from time to time regarding estimation of mortality, morbidity, life expectancy, etc. attributable to air pollution based on models and simulations are based on secondary data and extrapolation of findings based on small sample size to a larger population. Such estimates do not depict the actual status as there are no conclusive data available to establish direct correlation of death/ disease exclusively due to pollution. Health effects of pollution, including air pollution, are synergistic manifestation of factors which include food habits, occupational habits, socio-economic status, medical history, immunity, heredity, etc., of the individuals. So American and Brit Universities should not worry for India. Stanford and Duke should start worrying for their own country.
Based on own developed criteria, India has identified 123 non-attainment cities exceeding NAAQS, which were notified to protect human health including few coastal cities like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Vasai Virar, Thane, Surat, Vishakhapatnam, Srikakulam, Ongole, Nellore, Thoothukudi, Bhubaneswar and Balasore.
City specific Clean Air Action Plans have been prepared and rolled out for implementation in these non-attainment cities to improve the air quality. City Action Plans have short, medium and long term actions for city specific air polluting sources like Soil & Road Dust, Vehicles, Domestic Fuel, MSW Burning, Construction Material and Industries along with the responsible agencies.
NCAP envisages reduction by 20-30% in PM 10 concentration over baseline ( 2017 ) in 2024. Target has been revised to achieve reduction in PM10 level up to 40% or achievement of national standards (60 µg/m3) by 2025-26.
City Action Plans (CAPs) have been prepared by all 131 cities and being implemented by Urban Local Bodies.
The city specific clean air action plans target city specific air polluting sources like Soil & Road Dust, Vehicles, Domestic Fuel, MSW Burning, Construction Material and Industries
Performance based financial support is being provided to these131 cities for implementation of activities of City Action Plan.
Further, funding for implementation of CAPs is being mobilised through convergence of resources from various schemes of Central Government such as Swachh Bharat Mission SBM (Urban), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Smart City Mission, Sustainable Alternative towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT), Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME-II), Nagar Van Yojna, etc. and resources from State/UT Governments and its agencies such as Municipal Corporation, Urban Development authorities and Industrial development authorities etc.
So if the West is so interested then they can help India through hard Cash for all the above tasks but will not be permitted to interfere in any manner whatsoever. This will be akin to pay back for all the sins committed by East India Company right down to the sin of Partition.
