Environmental life cycle assessment of Indian coal-fired power plants

Coal is the backbone of the Indian power sector. The coal-fired power plants remain the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and substantial amounts of nitrogen oxides, which are associated with climate and health impacts. Various CO2 mitigation technologies (carbon capture and storage—CCS) and SO2/NOx mitigation technologies (flue gas desulfurization and selective catalytic reduction) have been employed to reduce the environmental impacts of the coal-fired power plants. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the feasibility of various mitigation technologies employed. This paper attempts to perform environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of Indian coal-fired power plant with and without CO2, SO2 and NOx mitigation controls. The study develops new normalization factors for India in various damage categories, using the Indian emissions and energy consumption data, coupled with the emissions and particulate emission to come up with a final environmental impact of coal-fired electricity. The results show a large degree of dependence on the perspective of assessment used. The impact of sensitivities of individual substances and the effect of plant efficiency on the final LCA results is also studied. © 2016, The Author(s).