INDUSTRY
Government relaxes sulphur emission norms for coal power plants
- IBJ Bureau
- Jul 13, 2025
The government has reversed a decade-old mandate to install $30 billion worth of clean-air equipment, easing sulphur emission rules for most coal-fired power plants.
The Reuters in December had reported that the government was reviewing the 2015 norms that required nearly 540 coal-based power units to install flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) systems that remove sulphur from the plants’ exhaust gases in phases, starting in 2027.
Late on Friday, the Union Environment Ministry issued a gazette notification that exempted 79 per cent of coal-fired power plants outside a 10-km radius of populated and polluted cities from the 2015 mandate.
The mandate to install FGD for another 11 per cent of the plants near populated cities would be taken on a “case-to-case basis”, the notification has added.
The balance of 10 per cent of the coal-fired power plants closer to New Delhi and other cities with a population of over 10 lakhs will be required to install the desulphurisation equipment by December 2027, according to the new mandate.
The notification comes after State-run NTPC, India’s top electricity producer, spent about $4 billion on installing the equipment at about 11 per cent of the power plants, and about 50 per cent of the units either placed orders for the desulphurisation systems or are installing them.
The Friday notification has not mentioned the impact on the competitiveness or recovery of costs by these power plants.
It has added that the decision was taken after the Central Pollution Control Board had carried out a detailed analysis of the increase in “carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere due to operation of control measures being deployed”.
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