Indian workers unloading a coal train.
Image: Flickr/Nick Sarebi
As many as 115,000 people die in India each year from coal-fired power plant pollution, costing the country about $4.6 billion, according to a groundbreaking new study released today.
The report by the Mumbai-based Conservation Action Trust is the first comprehensive examination of the link between fine particle pollution and health problems in India, where coal is the fuel of choice and energy demands are skyrocketing.
The findings are stunning. In addition to more than 100,000 premature deaths, it links millions of cases of asthma and respiratory ailments to coal exposure. It counts 10,000 children under the age of 5 as fatal victims last year alone.
"I didn't expect the mortality figures per year to be so high," said Debi Goenka, executive trustee of the Conservation Action Trust.
Goenka described health impacts as "one of the most neglected aspects" of local environmental impact assessments, saying, "We're so used to reading the EIA reports year after year saying, 'There are no impacts on health and human development.'"
The report, produced with Greenpeace India, uses power plant data compiled by former World Bank air pollution analyst Sarath Guttikunda, founding director of a Delhi-based organization focused on sharing scientific information called Urban Emissions. The data is based on plant and fuel characteristics, since India, researchers said, does not make continuous and open-source monitoring information available at the plant level.
Researchers then used models to estimate changes in ambient pollutant concentrations due to the presence of coal-fired plants in the region and estimated health impacts using peer-reviewed methodologies used in similar studies around the world. The report also has been submitted to the journal Atmospheric Environment.
'Entirely avoidable'?
Calling the findings "shocking," the authors said the sickness and death related to coal emissions underscores the need to enact more stringent emissions standards, deploy advanced pollution control technologies and increase the use of cleaner energy options.
"The data represents a clarion call to action to avoid the deadly, and entirely avoidable, impact this pollution is having on India's population," the authors wrote. Without changes, they warned, "hundreds of thousands of lives will continue to be lost due to emissions from coal power plants. Any attempts to weaken even the current environmental regulations will add to this unfolding human tragedy."
The study finds the impacts are concentrated in central and northern India. One region, covering clusters in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar, saw between 7,900 and 11,000 of all premature deaths.
Currently, India produces about 201 gigawatts of power, with more than half of its electricity generation coming from coal. A recent study by the World Resources Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., found that capacity is expected to more than double to 519 GW with the construction of 455 proposed new plants. That is only slightly less than pending new capacity in China, the world's reigning king of coal (ClimateWire, Sept. 17, 2012).
Meanwhile, coal industry leaders say they are optimistic about coal's ability to deliver developing countries out of energy poverty and have noted that coal is expected to surpass oil as the world's leading energy source by 2015.
Air conditioning will push more use
National Mining Association President Hal Quinn told the U.S. Energy Association's annual State of the Energy Industry Forum recently that India's coal-fired portfolio alone will grow from 65 percent of total generation to as much as 80 percent by 2025.
See what we're tweeting about
19 Comments
Add CommentReality once again gets in the way of the grand visions of unrealistic dreamers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia is an independent nation and its people want electricity. They will get that electricity as cost effectively and as quickly as they can.
India is no different in this pursuit than the other independent nations that want to provide electricity to the other 2.5 billion people worldwide who do not currently have access to electricity.
This is why worldwide emissions WILL continue to rise for decades regardless of US actions.
I am sure they will keep the 100,000 extra bodies, in the morgue where the 20 million climate refugees, that were supposed to be fact, and projected by 2012, are housed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should continue, to insist, that both China and India, speed up their coal generation - anti-pollution measures. Like the west they need to install modern electro-static precipitators and flue gas scrubbers. Not just on "new" builds but their aged stations also. They ARE going to demand financial assistance, from the west to do so. Money well spent IMO, but our economy is kind of shaky. GK
Hey, coal is not cost effective if they loose 100k+ people a year, costing them $4.6B. With all the health problems from coal pollution that DON'T get reported, the total amount of damages is probably much higher. It's a shame too, because solar energy is already at grid parity in many parts of India, so they don't need to be building all of this coal power capacity anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou believe that it is not cost effective for India, but then again you have zero say in India. The Indians will do what they feel is best for themselves. This is the same country that does a terrible job of building and maintaining a robust infrastructure to prevent harm from adverse weather.
Meanwhile western ENGO's, the IMF and World Bank are all doing their damnedest to blockade Nuclear power in India. Wouldn't want one of those zero-death Fukushima events would we? The Indian gov't traced funding for a series of violent anti-nuclear protests in India to some Western Foundations & ENGOs, so it blocked funds transfers from them. So what did Big Carbon's stooges do? They got the powerful Catholic church in India to organize blockades & protests of Nuclear Power plant builds in India. I guess the Catholic church must be short on cash from all those child sex abuse claims so they made a deal-with-the-devil so to speak, to get easy cash for helping Big Carbon blockade its only serious competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisG. Karst mindlessly repeated a denier meme that the U.N predicted 20 million refugees by 2012 (post #2). Sault asked for evidence of this U.N report.
And in comes Sisko to demonstrate his incompetency by linking to a MOVIE called Climate Refugees. In the quote that I suspect in your idiocy to somehow make a case for the U.N supposedly predicting 20 million refugees by 2012 I find the following:
"In figures released last Tuesday, the International Organization for Migration estimated climate change would drive a billion people worldwide from their homes in the next four decades. In 2008, 20 million people became homeless in environmental disasters, the IOM said."
So instead of swallowing with full credulity every story that pops up in the pseduo-skepticverse, how about practicing (Dare I say it?) skepticism and FIND that U.N report with the prediction and link to it.
Why is everyone discussing imaginary refugees when it was only a lead-in to my comment on the cleanup of India/China flue gases. While I mentioned nothing about the UN projections, here you will find various links that do discuss such UN claims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/
Try to discern the real message contained in my message. It's not that difficult. Perhaps someone else should explain the effect of reducing sulfates further from the atmosphere. Remember that geo-engineering proposals are suggesting we deliberately rocket (at great expense) these sulfates back into our atmosphere to arrest AGW. Like I said - hard choices - tough decisions. GK
Pretty hard to produce something that disappeared after it was discredited by reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the Wall Street Journal reports:
The program’s spokesman tells us the map vanished because “it’s not a UNEP prediction. . . . that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an oversimplification of UNEP views.” He added that the program would like to publish a clarification, now that journalists are “making hay of it,” except that the staffers able to do so are “all on holiday for Easter.”
As we’ve noted before, the map showing 50 million climate refugees by 2010 was created by a UNEP cartographer and released by UNEP and the figure was repeatedly mentioned by them, so a disavowal of it is more than a little strange. UNEP has in fact had days to respond already and have come up with nothing of substance.
As The Australian newspaper reported:
The map has since been removed because it was “causing confusion”, a UNEP spokesman reportedly told the German news website Spiegel Online. Professor of migration and refugee law at the University of NSW Jane McAdam, who has followed the controversy, said the original figure of 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010 derived from questionable calculations by the Oxford University academic Norman Myers.
“My understanding is that Norman Myers looked at a map of the world, and he said which are the hotspots that we think are going to be affected by climate change; then he looked up the projected populations for those areas in 2010 and 2050 and added them up,” she said.
“That’s how he got to such a figure, because he didn’t take into account that some people wouldn’t move.”
Professor McAdam said she thought Professor Myers would never have expected his predictions to be “taken up so widely”.
There you have it folks - the whole mess. I don't know why imaginary refugee musings have become this thread's focus. Can we leave fairies and elves behind. GK
@G Karst
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy gosh you are dense. YOU linked to a UN press release. Remember? http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10725.doc.htm
Funny how your memory just seems to fail you, eh?
G. Karst Says: . They are all imaginary numbers, no matter 2010 or 2012, they are WRONG.
Trent Says: Lovely you now think your assertions are equal to facts. What hubris.
From the article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Researchers then used models to estimate changes in ambient pollutant concentrations due to the presence of coal-fired plants in the region and estimated health impacts using peer-reviewed methodologies used in similar studies around the world."
Once again, models are not observed reality. They haven't proved even one death by coal.
WOW climate deniers and now pollution deniers. I Think you guys are just 'IN DENIAL'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWake up and smell the roses.
Never mind the dust the mold the filth and horrendous unsanitary conditions, lets blame it on coal, so we on the left can use this to suppress growth and progress which might lead to conservative economic thoughts and actions. What a crummy article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent1492 blurts... @G Karst - My gosh you are dense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlarmed, I immediately half filled my bathtub, marked a level, got in, carefully marked the resulting water level. Carefully measuring the difference in water displacement, and performing all the necessary mathematical calculations, I have determined, that my density results are normal.
Whew, what a relief.
Thank-you, for re-posting my link, which I posted, later, after repeated demands to produce "just one" actual UN document that made a refugee claim. Seems my memory is better than yours... and I am, after all, just another old man. :) btw: Of course, disappearing posts disrupts the continuity of the thread, try to keep it in mind, next time. GK
NEWS FLASH - The password for the remaining FOIA climategate e-mails has just been released. I wonder who will be left standing in 6 months. GK
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/13/climategate-3-0-has-occurred-the-password-has-been-released/#comment-1247158
All this ranting without a shred of proof to back it up...par for the course, I guess...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, still trying to peddle that "climategate" nonsense, after 7 independent investigations found ZERO wrongdoing. I guess climate denial becomes reality denial in the later stages...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe truth hurts doesn't it Sault?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat truth, that denialists like GK are also in favor of stealing other peoples property, adding false information to it and then using it to back their utterly discredited claims?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are confusing me with Peter Gleick, an alarmist, who confessed to such malfeasance publicly. No tampering has ever been claimed nor substantiated concerning CG1 or CG2. We have to wait for CG3. Peter Gleick has the sole honor. GK
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