Emissions from coal-fired power plants killed up to 115,000 Indians prematurely in 2011-12, leading to a cumulative monetary cost of Rs 16,000– 23,000 crore, claims a new report by Conservation Action Trust in partnership with Greenpeace India. At roughly 210 giga watts, India is the fifth largest electricity generator in the world, of which 66 per cent comes from coal.
Ironically, among the worst-affected regions in terms of health was the national capital, Delhi, followed by Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, the Indo-Gangetic plain, and most of central India.
The report, Coal Kills, derived from a database of 111 coal-fired power plants compiled by Urban Emissions in 2011-12, also attributed the millions of cases of asthma, respiratory and heart diseases and child mortality to coal-fired power plants.
“Demographically, adverse impacts are especially severe for the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. In addition, the poor, minority groups, and people who live in areas downwind of multiple power plants are likely to be disproportionately exposed to the health risks and costs of fine particle pollution,” says the report.
Fine particle pollution is a mixture of pollutants such as soot, acid droplets, heavy metals etc. that originate primarily from combustion sources such as power plants, diesel trucks, buses and cars.
The report called upon the Government to put in place pollution standards for individual power plants, with a proper monitoring mechanism. Emission standards in India lag behind those in China, Australia, the United States and the European Union, it added.
Sarath Guttikunda, TED Fellow and adjunct faculty at the Desert Research Institute, Reno, the US, and co-author of the report, said, “thousands of lives can be saved every year if India tightens its particulate emissions standards, introduces emission limits for pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury and institutes mandatory monitoring of emissions at plant stacks, making the data publicly available in real time."
The report said not just health, coal mining was also destroying forests in Central India and putting tigers, other wildlife and forest dependent communities at risk of losing their habitat.
Vinuta Gopal, Climate & Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace India said, "And at the end of it all, coal has failed to deliver energy security. We need a moratorium on new coal plants and ambitious policy incentives to unlock the huge potential India has in efficiency measures, wind and solar."