DOT Desk: The Department of Environment in its new Environmental Conservation Rules has exempted small coal and gas power plants from Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), raising concerns among environmentalists, reports The Daily Star.
Under the Environmental Conservation Rules (ECR)-2023, gazetted on March 5, coal-fired power plants having a capacity of up to 50MW and gas-fired plants having a capacity of up to 100MW will no longer require EIA. These two types of power plants have been put under the orange category.
In the previous ECR of 1997, all power plants were placed under the red category, meaning there was a legal binding for all electricity producers to prepare an EIA and an Environmental Management Plan (EMP). With the introduction of the new ECR, plants will no longer require to put such mechanism in place to check pollution from their operations.
Under the previous ECR, any business placed under the red category must prepare a Terms of Reference for conducting an EIA, take stakeholders’ opinion in preparing the EIA, assess the quality of air, water, and soil of its location, and fill up the form-06 for declaration that it will stick to its plan to check pollution. Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Europe-based research platform which analysed pollution from coal-based power plans in Bangladesh, found that coal combustion releases toxic substances like sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, mercury, and fly ash which.