Cement Energy and Environment

'To bring down the SOx emissions, flue-gas desulfurisation (FGD) technology is required, which would result in massive changes to the boiler. The relevant selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology is the current available technology to bring down nitrogen emissions (NOx). However, no company in India currently possesses the technological capabilities required to meet the reduction in NOx emissions,· says Sharma. 'The technical feasibility of retrofitting of plants remains questionable, which may make scrapping of old plants more viable than upgrading them,' Sharma added. Many of the existing plants simply do not have sufficient space for installation of additional equipment such as additional fields for ESP, DeNOx systems etc. , or spare land for FGDs . 'For example, some vendors have expressed the need to first set up a small pilot project to test the st:;tability of SCR technology for NOx reduction in Indian coal with high ash content. For SOx reduction systems such as FGD, the availability and transportation of good quality limestone (Estimated overall requirement of 24 million TPA) and disposal of gypsum (estimated 34 million TPA) in environmentally friendly manner may pose a problem,· says Khurana. Another major issue is, the short window for implementation would force plant shutdowns for an average 5 to 6 months. Sequential installation may require even longer shutdown time, leading to wide scale disruption in power supply across the grid. Bhati says that all the technologies required to meet the new environmental norms wme mature, except SCR, to test which NTPC is undertaking a pilot project. For S02, FGD is already being used in some imported coal-based plants and there is no issue on whether the standards are rnet or not. Other Issues It would be impossible for meeting the deadline (December 2017 for the existing plants and before commissioning for plants to be installed after January 2016). 'This is because of a number of factors, such as limited vendor availability, large scale plant retrofitting which takes considerably more time, need for phasing out implementation in order to minimise disruptive effect of plant shutdowns, uncertainty on benchmark costs and regulatory capex approvals without which financing cannot be done, etc.,· Khurana says. Citing all these reasons and global experience, he advocates staggering of the programme over a period of 7 to 10 years . The plants which are under construction have already frozen their design parameters and any changes at this stage will delay the commissioning of plants. Bhati, on the other hand says, half of the 34,000 MW of old plants can be closed down based on parameters like poor performance, poor efficiency, poor availability, poor environmental standards etc. Besides, states should be incentivised to replace them with super critical technologies or transfer their coal linkages to new players etc., such that the employment is not affected and the old plants get replaced . As old plants retire, the new plants with higher efficiency will run at higher PLF. That will improve the overall health of the power sector. APP has been highlighting that some of the norms are just impossible to achieve, such as the requirement of installing cooling tower and meeting specific water consumption of max 3.5m3/mwh. Pass through The additional capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenses will have a significant impact on the power tariff and affect the offtake of power by debt-ridden power distribution companies (discoms). While APP is estimating the additional cost incurred would lead to cost of power going up in the range of Rs.0.50 to Rs.1.25 per unit, CSE estimates the impact on power price in the 20-30 paise per unit range for the power plants. In order to facilitate funding from financial institutions, clarity is required in the pass through of power price arising from additional capital investments."Generators should have the assurance that the resultant tariff increases, as approved by the appropriate regulator, would be effected by the procurers with immediate effect, in full. Further, as the generators would need regulatory approval of capex before tying up financing , it is crucial that an institutional body comes out with benchmark costs in order to speed up the process of in-principle approvals ,.. APP suggested. 44 _, ,.....