New green norms to make power, fuels, cars costlier

NEW DELHI: Consumers will have to shell out more for power, fuel and cars in a few years as these industries begin to pass on the burden of technology upgrades being put in place for meeting increasingly stringent environmental and emission norms. The new environmental norms for coal-fired power plants, for example, are expected to push up electricity cost by 40-50 paise per unit. Motor fuels could become costlier by 70 paise or more per litre as the country moves to Bharat Stage-VI - akin to Euro-VI - grade fuels by April 2020. Similarly, carmakers say prices may rise by anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs1.5 lakh. No doubt these are back-of-envelope calculations and the final figures would depend on several factors such as rupee exchange rate, bulk prices of refined products and coal as well as shipping costs etc in the future. The new norms for coal-fired power stations, announced in December, for example, would impact 180,000 MW of generation capacity. Generators would have to shell out Rs 1.8 lakh crore to retrofit machinery for meeting the new emission norms, at the rate of Rs 1 crore per MW. This would be passed on to consumers. The new norms cover the range of emissions from power station including particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury etc as well as limiting water usage.   TOI