The Indian power company, which was entrusted with setting up a controversial power plant at Rampal, near the Sundarbans, had failed to implement a similar project in India for refusal of permission by the government of India, experts allege. They also claim that Bangladesh will incur a loss of Tk. 140,000 crore for buying power at a higher price from the project.
The NTPC, the Indian power firm, proposed a plant for the state of Chhattisgarh in India which will produce similar amount (1,320 MW) of electricity. However, the Green Panel of India’s Ministry of Environment disapproved the proposal, terming it as “highly threatening to environment”, said AKM Wahiduzzaman and Mohammed Tawsif Salam (), who have been engaged in research on the impact of Rampal power plant. “Under India’s ‘Wild Life Protection Act 1972’, it is prohibited to build a power plant with wildlife reservations, national parks and forestry within a 15-km radius. This means that the power plant that the NTPC had proposed to build near the Sunderbans, a Bangladeshi forestry, could never be built in India according to their law if it were an Indian forestry,” the experts say. Moreover, no international rules would permit establishment of a coal-based power plant so close to a reserved forest. Experts claim that the EIA (Environment Impact Assessment) report as well as the approval given by the Bangladeshi authorities did not follow the due processes, which becomes clear if it is compared with the one given by its Indian counterpart over the proposed plant for Chhattisgarh.
The comparison shows inconsistencies in the environmental risk assessments of the two authorities: The EIA report by Bangladesh DoE states that a radius of 10-km from the Sunderbans is considered as the Environmentally Critical Area (ECA) and the proposed site for the plant is 14 km away from the forest, making the plant not risky as it is four km away from the ECA of the Sunderbans.
Experts, however, say that the findings through the Geographical Information System (GIS) software show that this distance is between nine and 13 km.Meanwhile, the country’s green activists vehemently opposed the setting up of Rampal project.
Talking to The Independent, executive director of Bangladesh Environment Lawyers’ Association (BELA) Syeda Rizwana Hasan said that the project had been approved by violating several international environmental rules.
Dr Anu Muhammad of the National Committee to protect Oil and Gas, which is conducting a long march towards Rampal now, said besides harming the Sundarbans, the power plant would cause huge financial loss for Bangladesh.
The government has to incur a loss of Tk. 140,000 crore, he added.Quoting experts, he said, “Apart from extensive environmental damages, the proposed Rampal plant is not financially viable. As many as 15 per cent of the costs will be borne by the PDB, 15 per cent will be borne by the NTPC and bank loans would cover the rest.
The produced electricity will be entirely purchased by the PDB, and the profit after PDB’s purchasing will be split between the PDB and the NTPC equally. Coal price has been set to be the basis of the power price. The agreement already declares purchase of coal at a price of USD 145, which would force the PDB to buy the produced power at a price of not less than Tk. 8.85.
If we benchmark this price with the PDB’s domestic coal-based power deals, the prices of proposed plants in Dhaka’s Maowa, Chittagong’s Anwara and Khulna’s Labanchara are Tk. 4, Tk. 3.8 and Tk. 3.8, respectively. The price for the proposed Rampal plant is found to be doubled.”There are significant inconsistencies in the proposition for land requirement for the project.
The proposed power plant in Chhattisgarh, which was to produce 1,320 MW of power, required 792 acres which had to be acquired by the government prior to the plant’s construction.The proposed Rampal plant, which will also produce 1,320 MW of electricity, is set to force the Government of Bangladesh to acquire 1,834 acres, consisting largely of farming lands and fisheries.
Over 95 per cent of the land is capable of harvesting thrice a year, and every year the land produced 1,285 tonnes of rice and 561.41 metric tonnes of fish. Over 8,000 families are permanent residents of the allocated land and 7,500 families live on farming and fisheries.
The Rampal plant will evict these families from their homes.According to the EIA report of the Bangladesh DoE, the 75 per cent of the 10-km area of impact is used for firming that produces 62,353 tonnes of rice and 140,461 tonnes of other crops every year. As the rivers and canals of the area of the impact are connected with the mangrove forest, they produce 5,218.66 metric tonnes of fishes annually. Once the plant is set up, the entire area of impact will be unsuitable for firming, jeopardising the significant crops and fish production.
According to the EIA report, 4.72 million tonnes of coal will be burnt to produce the estimated 1,320 MW of electricity at the proposed Rampal power plant. According to Avogadro’s law, one tonne of burnt coal will produce 2.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Therefore, at a load factor of 80 per cent, the plant will produce 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, though the EIA report mentions that 7.9 million tonnes from it will be added to fly ash.
Taking the report into account, it becomes obvious that the plant will produce at least 7.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is too risky and environmentally threatening.Besides carbon dioxide, the plant will release 142 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 85 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide every day, amounting to 51,830 tonnes and 31,025 tonnes respectively a year.
As a result, the natural density of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the Sunderbans will rise many folds, which will trigger eventual destruction of the forest.When Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited India in 2010, a memorandum of understanding on the power generation plant near the Sunderbans in Rampal, was jointly signed by the two Prime Ministers.
Later, India’s National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Bangladesh’s Power Development Board (PDB) signed a treaty in 2012. The treaty proposes to establish two 660-MW unit power plants in Rampal to produce 1,320 MG power. The land in Rampal was allocated on 27 December, 2010, without assessing any environmental aspects and threats.
-With The Independent input
