Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), C.K. Mishra, on Thursday underlined the need for securing finance and technology with an industry-driven approach for complying with the revised guidelines mandating Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) to bring down pollution levels and restrict the discharge of particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury in the atmosphere.

Speaking at the workshop on 'Implementing New Emission Norms for Power Sector' organised by FICCI, Mishra said that though compliance to the revised guidelines should have been achieved by now there is a need for collective action for adhering to the norms by the revised deadline of 2022.

TPPs were earlier required to achieve the notified limit within two years from the date of the notification, i.e. by December 7, 2017.

The FICCI workshop aimed at 'Developing a roadmap for implementation of New Emission Norms for Thermal Power Plants' with the close participation of the Ministry of Power (MoP) and Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), CPCB, CEA, CSIR-NEERI, CSTEP, power developers, equipment manufacturers, financial institutions, research institutions, multilateral and bilateral developmental institutions.

The participants discussed on a wide range of issues during the workshop such as availability of right technology, securing additional funding, impact of long shutdown periods, space constraints, issues related to pass-through of additional capex and opex, issues of captive power plants, availability and transportation of limestone, off-take of gypsum, amongst others.

A.K. Bhalla, Secretary, Ministry of Power, urged industry to make more efforts for compliance with the revised guidelines. He assured the Ministry of Power?s support in resolving all bottlenecks for industries to achieve swift and timely implementation of the new emission norms.