Thermal power: Power industry seeks relaxation on fly ash disposal norms

Since the demand for fly ash has decreased from brick and cement manufacturing units, the power plants have requested the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change not to impose financial penalties if they are unable to use all the fly ash produced from power generation. Cement Industry uses about 25% of the ash generated from power plants. Bricks and tile manufacturers use about 10%, and another 10% is used for constructing flyovers and roads. More than 5% of the fly ash is utilised for the improvement of low-lying regions. Thermal plants are assumed to use 100% of fly ash from the fourth year of development. In a letter to the environment ministry, the Association of Power Producers said that since March 2020, the demand for fly ash from cement industries, road construction units, and brick manufacturing companies had stopped completely. The letter also added that while the demand was displaying some signs of improvement in the intermediate period, it dropped again during the second wave of the pandemic and its associated lockdown/curfew rules inflicted over the country. The 101 power plants observed in FY20 produced 226 million tonnes of fly ash in the fiscal, 83% of which could have been used. Of these, 47 plants had attained 100% usage, while the utilisation of another 14 units ranked between 90% and 100%. APP requested that the need for 100% fly ash utilisation may be ignored for FY21 and FY22, and financial penalties should not be forced on thermal power plants during this period. Image Source Also read: NTPC to conduct contest for ideas on utilisation of fly ash Also read: LC3 cement can reduce carbon emission by 40%