NEW DELHI: Top Indian electricity generator NTPC has rejected the emissions-cutting technology of GE and other foreign firms for its coal-fired plants, documents show, shutting them out of an estimated $2 billion in orders.
Despite struggling with some of the world’s worst air pollution levels, India has already pushed back a deadline to cut emission levels to up to 2022, after extensive lobbying by power producers who cited high costs and technical difficulties.
The rejection of the foreign technology comes at a time when over half of coal-fired plants in India are already set to miss a phased deadline starting December 2019 to cut emissions of lung diseases-causing sulphur oxides.
State-run NTPC, which generates a quarter of India’s electricity, held talks with foreign firms including General Electric Co, Norway-based Yara International and Japan-based Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems over the potential purchase of filters that lower emissions of smog-causing nitrogen oxide.
However, none of the pilot tests it conducted met key emissions parameters, NTPC said in a presentation submitted last month to the Central Pollution Control Board.
“The pilot tests concluded that both selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technologies currently available are not suitable for installation at power plants in India,” it said in the presentation reviewed by Reuters, referring to technologies used to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides.
Thermal power companies produce three-quarters of the country’s electricity and account for some 80 per cent of India’s industrial emissions of sulphur oxides that cause lung diseases and smog-creating nitrogen oxides.
NTPC had presented cost estimates in 2016 for the installation of the technology to cut nitrogen oxides throughout its network of power plants. According to Reuters calculations based on those estimates, the cost would total $2.4 billion, although industry consultants said recently that those costs could now be 25 per cent lower.
The utility wants a dilution in nitrogen oxide emissions standards and claimed in last month’s presentation that the lowered standards can be achieved with minor retrofits, without the need to install new equipment.
The pollution board held a stakeholder meeting on November 7, an audio recording of which was reviewed by Reuters. In the meeting, GE and Yara representatives rejected NTPC’s views, saying their technologies were proven worldwide, according to the recording and two sources present at the meeting. NTPC did not attend the meeting.
NTPC, and the Indian units of GE and Yara did not respond to detailed Reuters questionnaires seeking comment. Mitsubishi Hitachi did not immediately respond to a request for comment made on its website.
NTPC said in the earlier presentation to the pollution board that high ash content in Indian coal posed challenges to installing SCR technology and that SNCR did not meet key parameters.— Reuters
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