Perils of sending high cash coal to distant power plants

Nirmal Chandra Jha

Recently, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has amended the Environmental (Protection) Rules, with the provision of doing away with the restriction of supply and use of over 34 percent ash non-coking coal at the power plants located beyond 500 km away from the mines.

This issue is a cause of concern not only for the non-government environmentalists but also for Coal India which has already set up non-coking coal washeries as per the earlier mandate of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986.

Having been in the coal industry for more than 40 years and an advocate of introducing washing of high ash non-coking coal, I thought to bring to the notice of the readers the events that have led to the current situation.

Background of first restrictions on use of >34% ash coal

With the introduction of Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the rules framed there under subsequently, the need for taking measure to control pollution of air, water and land gathered importance for sustainable development.

Several notifications were issued from time to time and one such relating to usage of high ash non-coking coal in the power plants or other industries was framed as sub-rule 8 of Rule 3 of the Environmental (Protection) Rules in September 1997.

In the background of this Rule was the results of the studies conducted with usage of washed non-coking coal in some of the power plants, namely Dahanu of BSES and also one of NTPC.

The results had indicated that there was ample improvement in the efficiency of the boilers and other parameters of power generation amounting to increased production of power.

As per my memory these tests had been done at three different power plants at different time frames. These tests indicated definite improvement in the plant efficiency, efficiency of auxiliary services and production of power, reducing its cost of production with the usage of washed thermal coal.

Apart from this study, there was an issue of increased cost of transportation of the inert material (ash) in the case of unwashed coal being transported to far away plants leading to increased cost of power production.

Thus, both from the point of view of economics and the environmental improvement, the notification was issued by the then Ministry of Environment and Forest in 1997, restricting the use of >34% ash noncoking coal in plants located >1000km away from the pit head or located in an urban area or an ecologically sensitive area or a critically polluted industrial area, irrespective of its distance from the pit-head, calculated on average annual basis. This Rule fixed the responsibility on the user of coal and not on the producer or supplier of coal.

Impact on the coal sector subsequent to notification of 1997

Subsequent to promulgation of this Rule, a lot of development in the field of setting up of non-coking coal washeries took place in the country. A large number of private investors set up such washeries to beneficiate non-coking coal linked to the consumers. Coal India’s subsidiaries BCCL and CCL, primarily washing coking coal also converted some of their washeries to wash non-coking coal and continued supplying the middling of coking coal washeries to power plants to help power plants to achieve their goal of <34% ash on annualized basis.

Coal India also adopted the strategy of setting up non-coking coal washeries and a plan was prepared to set up 20 coal washeries, including a few for washing coking coal in 2007 and actions started on some of them.

The pace of setting up such washeries at Coal India subsidiaries remained very poor due to various factors including some road blocks at the Ministry of Environment and Forest.