From the N Y Times (April 20, 2012) A Silver Lining in India’s Coal Crisis By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI
A cow w grazes on the land where a power plant is slated to come up in Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh. Work on the plant has stalled due to a shortage in supply of domestic coal. Other plants nearing completion can be seen in the backdrop. A power crisis in energy-starved India that has stalled the construction of thermal plants doesn’t strike one immediately as a piece of good news.
But for activists and many villagers in areas where power plants are slated to be built, it’s a silver lining.
In Nellore on the southeastern coast of India, a port was built four years ago that could draw in coal. More than two dozen large plants were then proposed. And the electricity produced could power the state, Andhra Pradesh, which has crippling blackouts that can last several hours, if not days, in some areas.
Today, however, most of the plants have dim prospects. Cows graze placidly on land that had been bought by power companies to build plants. Day laborers painstakingly hack trees to clear the land. There’s no rush. The power plants are missing their most important ingredient – coal. That’s because of an insufficient domestic supply of the black rock. And imported coal has become unviable after India’s biggest supplier, Indonesia, recently doubled coal prices.
“So far nothing has been commissioned,” said Dinesh Kumar, a senior energy department official. He added that only a handful of the power plants are likely to get built.
But the stalled work brings relief for activists and villagers who were alarmed at the rapid pace at which power plants had been approved in Nellore.
“Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore district is fast becoming the state’s dumping yard for intensely polluting coal-based thermal plants,” states a January report from the Human Rights Forum in Andhra Pradesh. “The appraisal bodies have been clearing these projects one-by-one, without looking at the compound impact of all these projects taken together.”
The group said the projects together would have contaminated the surroundings with chemicals, and 2,700 tons of sulfur and 130,000 tons of toxic ash would have been spewed into the environment.
Local officials say that the estimated 25,000 megawatts of power that would have been generated if all the planned plants were built is unlikely. Power plants being built in the next three years will have a combined capacity of 15,000 megawatts, according to data provided by government officials.
A research group that lobbies for sustainable and equitable development says that environmental clearances are being granted at a rate which is more than six times the actual installation of plants in India.
Like other sectors, the shortage of power reflects a bungled approach to industrial development in India.
“We don’t have clear-cut legislations in India like the Clean Air Act in the U.S.,” said Vijay Kumar, a doctor in Nellore who was involved in the protests against the plants. He said that he treats about two people every day who have respiratory infections, many who had worked in an old local thermal plant.
A short distance from one of the power plants in Nellore, at a tribal hamlet of the Yanadis, a marginalized community, villagers are apprehensive about the potential pollution of the plant. One fisherman said that the ongoing construction had reduced his catch of fish at the close-by Buckingham Canal. In surrounding villages, residents say they don’t see any benefit from the emerging plants. Some point out that their education and skill levels are unlikely to get them jobs at the plants.
Luckily for those opposed to the plants, it doesn’t look like the emerging plants will be fueled anytime soon. Coal production is increasing at an average of 5 percent a year while power plant capacity is growing between 10 and 15 percent. The irony is that India has one of the world’s largest reserves of coal but state-owned Coal India, which controls 80 percent of production, isn’t digging fast enough. That hasn’t stopped it from winning a “company of the year award”
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