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India's Outdated Coal Power Plants Risk Numerous Lives & Contribute Massively To Global Warming

India’s pollution problem is growing leaps and bounds and without immediate corrective measures, the situation is only going to get worse. Apart from vehicular and industrial pollution, India’s heavy dependency on thermal power plants is a cause of worry.

China and the US are the largest producers of coal power but power plants in the country take the

highest toll on health, claims a global study. Coal-fired power plants not only produce carbon dioxide but also contribute tremendously to global warming.

Coal burning also releases particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury — thus damaging the health of many people around the world, said the researchers.

The researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland estimated where action is most urgently required. They modelled and calculated the undesired side effects of coal power for each of the 7,861 power plant units in the world.

The data proved that India’s power plants are most dangerous to health.

India’s power plants are still old equipped with insufficient flue gas treatment said Stefanie Hellweg from ETH Zurich’s Institute of Environmental Engineering, who led the study. However, the power plants in Central Europe, North America and China all have modern power plants.

Reuters

As a result, Indian power plants only remove a fraction of pollutants from coal of inferior quality. Most European nations use high-quality coal.

“More than half of the health effects can be traced back to just one-tenth of the power plants. These power plants should be upgraded or shut down as quickly as possible,” said Christopher Oberschelp, the lead author of the study.

“The global picture of coal power production shows that the gap between privileged and disadvantaged regions is widening. This is happening for two reasons.

Firstly, wealthy countries — such as in Europe — import high-quality coal with a high calorific value and low emissions of harmful sulphur dioxide. The coal exporting countries are left with low quality of coal which are often burned in outdated power plants without treatment to remove sulphur dioxide.

Reuters

“In Europe, we contribute to global warming with our own power plants, which has a global impact. However, the local health damage caused by particulate matter, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide occurs mainly in Asia, where coal power is used to manufacture a large proportion of our consumer products,” said Oberschelp.

“Global coal resources will last for several hundred years, so the harmful emissions need to be limited politically. It is particularly important to leave coal that is high in mercury and sulphur content in the ground,” said Oberschelp.

Reducing dependency on coal should be the top priority but rapid and aggressive industrialisation in China and India is only worsening the situation.

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