In the winter months, as is the case every year, there is a focus on the toxic air that the residents of the Nation's capital are made to breathe. The good news in these times is when the air quality "improves" from a "severe" to a "very poor" categorisation. In some pockets of the NCR, the AQI remains off the scale.
Around this time the state administrations and central government spar over the jurisdiction of policy implementation, which the Supreme Court cracking its whip. The Supreme court in fact threatened state governments and the centre with setting up an independent task force if the pollution norms are not complied with, and even pointing out that while a lot is being claimed, nothing is being done, with the air quality continuing to deteriorate. This winter, the air quality in November was the worst in seven years.
The yearly measures such as construction and entry of heavy vehicles is implemented late or not at all, and the enforcement is weaker in the wider NCR region as compared to Delhi. The curbing of thermal power plants leads to the use of diesel generators, which can be counterproductive. Some other recommendations, such as an increase in parking fees to reflect the true cost to the environment are not implemented at all. The fines, challans and curbs disappear once the air quality "improves". On December 16, the Supreme Court called for a permanent solution, with a long term plan to solve the problem of air pollution in Delhi.
A study by the The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) focuses on the most harmful of the various pollutants that affects the air quality in Delhi, and explores various pathways of reducing concentration of PM2.5 by modelling various future scenarios. The report is titled "Cost-effectiveness of interventions for control of air pollution in Delhi" and was supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The study makes three predictions on three time scales, 2022 for the short term, 2025 in the medium term, and 2030 for the long term. In the business as usual scenario, the concentration of PM2.5 in winter is expected to fall by 9 per cent in 2022, 21 per cent in 2025 and 28 per cent by 2030. Even with this decrease, the levels of PM2.5 pollution will remain well above the recommended levels.
In 2019, the major contributions to prevailing concentrations of PM2.5 during the winter time in Delhi were transport (23 per cent), industries, including power plants (23 per cent) and biomass burning (14 per cent). The study suggests that the policy interventions should last throughout the year to curb the pollution in winter, as well as an airshed approach, which means strategies designed to cover the entire region where air gets trapped in North India. Lucknow, Kanpur, Ludhiana and several other most polluted cities in India, with a population in excess of 50 crore fall under this airshed.
The suggested interventions include electrification of vehicles, strict implementation of environmental norms at the thermal power plants, fleet modernisation and a shift to public transport in the airshed region. Additional controls beyond these are required for the air quality to meet national recommended standards, such as curbing ammonia release from farms, enforcement of a blanket ban on refuse burning, converting coal based power plants to clean energy, stringent dust suppression controls, cleaner technologies for brick kilns, use of induction cooktops, and stricter control of dust from construction.
Implementation of stricter interventions across the entire airshed region can avoid 12,300 mortalities in 2030 translating to an economic benefit of around Rs 430 billion.
The full report can be accessed on the TERI website.
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