Seeking to deal with the menace of stubble burning that leads to increase in air pollution during every winter, the centre has notified new rules making it mandatory for all coal-based thermal power plants in Delhi-NCR and neibouring areas to use a minimum 5% blend of pellets or briquettes made of crop residue along with coal for power generation.

Under the rules, notified on Tuesday, erring power plants will have to pay a penalty for non-compliance, beginning 2024-25. The rules, at the same time, empower the Central Electricity Regulatory Commisions, as the case may be, to determine tariff under the Electricity Act, 2003 after taking into consideration the provisions of mandatory utilisation of crop residues in power plants.

The rules-called the Environment (Utilisation of crop residue by Thermal Power Plants) Rules, 2023- to regulate the utilisation of crop-residue is the second such recent move to deal with the stubble burning problem through policy interventions. The agriculture ministry earlier this month revised its crop residue management guidelines for setting up techno-commercial pilot projects for the paddy straw supply chain in order to come out with more robust and efficient stubble management practices in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

The agriculture ministry's interventions will encourage a supply chain management of paddy straw which will further help in making such stubble available for various end uses ie, power generation, heat generation, bio-CNG, etc. by power/bio-CNG/bio-ethanol producers. It will help in ex-situ management of paddy straw whose burning otherwise leads to a spike in air pollution post-harvest season beginning October.

According to the ministry's estimates, 1.5 million metric tonnes of surplus paddy straw are expected to be collected during the next three years. Besides, over 300 biomass collection depots of 4500 metric tonnes capacity will be built in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

The environment ministry's rules, on the other hand, will focus on utilisation of paddy stubble in power plants. "It will not only reduce use of carbon emitting coal but also utilise the crop residue by giving adequate price of farm waste to farmers. The robust supply chain will make the process easier," said an official.

The rules also have provision of granting relaxation to power plants in certain circumstances. The notification said that the Commission for Air Quality Management may, on case to case basis, grant relaxation to thermal power plants, in consultation with the Central Electricity Authority and the Central Pollution Control Board, for addressing any difficulty arising out of circumstances beyond the control of such thermal power plants in its compliance of the rules.