Jairam Ramesh slams govt after it eases SO2 emission norms

New Delhi: With the government exempting about 78 cent per cent of coal-fired plants from installing key anti-polluting systems, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said the Environment Ministry’s rationale for the policy is based on “faulty premises”.

He asserted that the government’s policymaking will continue to be driven by “flawed metrics” in the absence of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) revision.

The former environment minister attacked the government after the central government once again extended the deadline for coal-based thermal power plants to comply with sulphur dioxide emission norms and fully exempted those located away from critically polluted areas or cities with a population of over one million.

“The Modi Government has already achieved the dubious distinction of having made India the global leader in sulphur dioxide emissions. Now we learn that the Environment Ministry has exempted 78-89% of India’s thermal power plants from installing flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) systems that cut sulphur dioxide emissions,” Ramesh said in a post on X.

This is after the deadline for installing FGD systems, initially slated for 2017, was repeatedly pushed, the Congress general secretary said.

Sulphur dioxide is a direct threat to public health and has also been known to impact cloud formation, disrupting the monsoon that is the lifeline of the Indian economy, Ramesh said.

“More damagingly, research has increasingly shown that a large part of India’s ambient PM2.5 (fine particulate matter of diameter less than 2.5 mm) is attributable to secondary particulate matter formed when sulphur dioxide reacts with other compounds,” he said.

Estimates suggest that anywhere between 12 per cent to 30 per cent of PM2.5 is attributable to such sulphur dioxide compounds, he said.

“The Ministry’s rationale for this policy is based on two faulty premises. The Ministry had earlier amended the focus of the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) to focus largely on PM10 emissions (particulate matter of less than 10mm diameter).

“PM10 is a lot less dangerous to human health than PM2.5 but is more obviously visible and somewhat easier to tackle, since it includes elements such as road dust.” he said.

By choosing to turn a blind eye towards PM2.5 in its policymaking, the ministry has consigned us to many years more of our ongoing public health crisis – and this decision to tolerate sulphur dioxide compounds is only set to exacerbate this trend, he said.

“The Ministry claims that sulphur dioxide levels in India are largely within the limits of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). As we have repeatedly pointed out, the NAAQS were last updated in 2009, when the prevailing levels of particulate matter and emissions were of a decidedly lower order of magnitude, and when the catastrophic public health consequences of particulate matter were not known, Ramesh said.