India Is World's Biggest Polluter Of Sulphur Dioxide, But Are We Doing Enough To Cut Emissions?

Aside from carbon-related byproducts, sulphur dioxide is one of the biggest pollutants in the atmosphere.

Though it's not itself a greenhouse gas, it's a precursor for GHGs like sulphur hexafluoride. And apparently we're responsible for most of it in the world.

Images courtesy: Reuters

NASA just released data from its Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite, which Greenpeace has been analysing. The environmental group found that more than 15 percent of the world's sulphur dioxide emissions generated by human activities comes from India.

The data encapsulated 500 major sources of SO2 emissions from around the globe. For the most part these were metal industry plants, ships, vehicles, and a few natural sources like volcanoes.

The report found that the worst hotspot for SO2 emissions was actually a smelter complex in Norilsk in Russia. However, Singrauli, Neyveli, Talcher, Jharsuguda, Korba, Kutch, Chennai, Ramagundam, Chandrapur and Koradi were all among the top hotspots globally. Not surprising considering India accounts for nine of the 10 most polluted cities in the world.

A lot of SO2 emissions also come from fossil fuel-based power plants, of which India has plenty. So back in 2015, the Indian government for the first time introduced SO2 emissions limits for these coal plants. It also set a 2017 deadline for technology to be introduced that could control these emissions from power generation. Unfortunately, they also then pushed that deadline to 2019 for Delhi-NCR and 2022 for power plants elsewhere, which seems like a very lax timeline.

Is the government's response appropriate?

Meanwhile, the government only recently debuted the National Clean Air Program, which aims to reduce air pollution in 102 cities in five years. First of all, that program was introduced after a year of dithering. Additionally, it looks to only reduce pollution by 20 to 30 percent in five years. For many environmental activists, that's much too small a measure for a plan that took so long to introduce in the first place.

So this latest data should be an alarm bell for the government. After all, SO2 doesn't just contribute to greenhouse gases. It's also toxic by itself, and can cause breathing issues when present in large quantities in the air, after just 15 minutes.

"This report makes it clear that we cannot give coal power plants a free hand to continue polluting and keep leading to health emergency situation in India," said Pujarini Sen, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace which released the report.

"We are facing an air pollution emergency and yet it is far from clear that power plants will meet even the extended deadlines to comply with pollution limits. This problem will only get worse the government must act now"