The Indian government weakened rules to curb pollution caused by its expanding coal industry after lobbying by top producers, even as it agreed internationally to phase down the use of coal, an investigation by Climate Home has found.
India’s coal giants pushed back hard against environmental regulation meant to tighten up the disposal of fly ash – a byproduct of coal-fired power plants known to harm both humans and the environment if not managed properly.
Letters sent by coal companies to the Indian government – and accessed by Climate Home News through freedom of information requests to government agencies – reveal lobbying efforts to weaken federal rules between 2019 and 2023.
The state-run firms involved were Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s third-biggest coal mining company, and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Limited, one of the top 10 coal-fired power companies globally.
Top management at the coal giants claimed their organisations would not be able to comply fully with the government regulations, aimed at controlling fly ash disposal after decades of public health impacts for local communities. Even after the rules were approved, the companies continued efforts to weaken them, in some cases successfully.
Residents of Kuruvimedu village in Tamil Nadu show coal dust and fly ash on 10 March 2017 (Photo: Sajan Ponappa/Greenpeace)
NTPC argued financial constraints would keep them from meeting the new requirements to clean up waste accumulated over decades and prevent further ash pollution, according to the accessed documents.
In some cases, lobbying got results and regulations were eased, with the environment and power ministries drawing on arguments from both companies in official correspondence between government agencies.
Climate Home contacted the two coal companies and India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for comment on the issues raised in this article but did not receive a response.
COP26 commitment
In 2021, while the proposed fly ash mandates were under discussion in India, the country was negotiating the COP26 climate pact in Glasgow, which calls on all governments to take action “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”.
At those UN talks, India rejected stronger language on a global shift away from coal, but it agreed to scale back unabated coal power, which is produced without technology to reduce its climate-heating emissions.
Despite this deal, coal infrastructure around the world has since grown, mostly driven by added coal mining and power capacity in India, China and Indonesia.
The Indian documents obtained by Climate Home reveal that the South Asian nation’s coal companies lobbied against regulations on fly ash pollution while expanding coal production at record speed.
In their correspondence with ministries, they argued that high fines for non-compliance with waste disposal rules were a risk to their financial sustainability and raised the prospect of coal-fired power plants being shut down, triggering a power crisis in the country.
A letter from the NTPC’s director of operations to the environment ministry on February 8, 2022. Highlights by Climate Home News
Fly ash pollution
When thermal power plants burn coal for energy, the fly ash they generate as a byproduct is dumped in water-filled, dam-like structures called dykes.
Old “legacy” dykes store ash from previous decades and are a major source of pollution for nearby communities, explained independent air pollution analyst Sunil Dahiya. Wet ash can leach into groundwater, while dry ash can blow away, causing air pollution and damaging crops.
Functioning disposal sites are also vulnerable to heavy rains, as they can overflow and pollute nearby settlements. This happened on at least three occasions between 2019 and 2021, according to a 2021 report by the NGO Fly Ash Watch Group.
To minimise the impacts of fly ash, companies can recycle it into products like bricks, cement sheets, panels and other construction materials – a process known as “utilisation”.
Children playing beside one of the many ash dykes of the NTPC Sipat Thermal Power Plant on March 11, 2017 (Saagnik Paul/Greenpeace)
Sehr Raheja, climate change officer at the Indian think-tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), highlighted the need to utilise “legacy” ash given “the enormous quantity”, adding there are risks involved with it staying underground, such as water and soil pollution.
As of 2019, the amount of accumulated unused ash in the country was about 1.65 billion tonnes, according to a CSE report, with newer estimates suggesting even more, she said.
“Loophole” in regulation
Fly ash regulation – known officially as the Fly Ash Notification – has been in place in India since 1999. But it was not until a 2021 update to the rules that fines were introduced for failing to comply with proper waste disposal, following the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
The regulation also imposed a mandate on thermal power plants to ensure 100% utilisation of accumulated old fly ash, as well as fresh ash produced by ongoing operations.
Documents accessed by Climate Home show that NTPC exchanged letters with government agencies asking for elimination of the mandate to clean up accumulated ash.
“It is proposed that the provisions for utilization of old legacy ash may be dropped,” reads a 2021 letter from NTPC to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change.
A letter from NTPC’s managing director to the environment ministry on June 11, 2021. Highlights by Climate Home News
The 2021 rules were nonetheless passed, and they did introduce strict fines for coal companies. However, they also included what experts called a “loophole”.
The fly ash regulation exempted power plants from having to find a use for their old legacy ash as long as the ponds where it was stored were considered “stabilised”, meaning they had been secured against leakage. But the technical specifications of how that should be done were not defined, leading to concerns that arbitrary exemptions could be granted.
Yet even after these revamped regulations came into force in late 2021, lobbying intensified.
Persistence pays off
In 2022, NTPC was still concerned by a deadline of 10 years to utilise all legacy ash accumulated over decades, according to a letter addressed to the environment ministry. This would force them to transfer large quantities of fly ash to end users like brick-making kilns or ceramic product makers – or pay fines.
NTPC met with regulators at the Ministry of Power and agreed an extension to the period for stabilising old ash dykes from one to three years.
In the case of “operational” ponds, officials were persuaded not to label them as legacy ash, exempting them from the requirement for full utilisation. These changes were included in a 2022 amendment to the rules.
A civil servant’s notes from a meeting between government officials and the NTPC on 5 July 2022. Highlights by Climate Home News
Shripad Dharmadhikary, who leads civil-society research group Manthan Adhyayan Kendra and has worked on fly ash management, said the unclear definition of stabilisation and longer time-frame for doing it provided “a loophole for power plants to evade use or proper disposal of legacy ash”
The lack of technical parameters meant government authorities could struggle to guarantee that no more leaks would occur even if they certified the ponds, he added.
“Threat” to coal industry finances
The powerful companies also managed to limit the level of fines for non-compliance in a prolonged effort that began in 2020, when the first draft proposal on the new fly ash rules was circulated among coal companies.
That included a fine of Rs 1,500 (about $17.80) per tonne, which was cut to Rs 1,000 ($11.90) in the final 2021 rules after NTPC and other coal companies opposed it and asked for it to be removed entirely.
Even after this, executives from both Coal India and NTPC expressed alarm about the financial implications of the fines.
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In a February 2022 letter to the Ministry of Environment, for instance, NTPC’s then director of operations Ramesh Babu V. wrote that the company could end up paying Rs 76,000 crores ($9 billion) over a decade – an amount “significant enough to threaten financial viability of NTPC and country’s thermal sector alike”. He warned that the penalties could make large power stations at mining pit heads commercially unviable, leading to a “power crisis”.
Similarly, in a 2023 letter, CIL chairman and managing director Pramod Agrawal estimated that the “financial penalty” on only one of its subsidiaries (NCL) for failure to comply with the regulations could cost the latter Rs 38,145 crores (at least $4 billion) for just the 2022-2023 financial year.
Coal expansion
However, the threats the executives outlined to their companies’ bottom lines do not appear to have translated into lower capacity to mine coal and produce thermal power, as both were ramped up drastically during and after discussions on the Fly Ash Notification.
Expansion efforts were redoubled especially after an unprecedented power crisis in late 2021, which was attributed to logistical issues causing a shortage of coal supply.
In a January 2024 conference call with investors, NTPC’s management said it was considering awarding thermal power capacity of 15.2 gigawatts (GW) in the near future, on top of the 9.6 GW thermal capacity already under construction for the group.
CIL, in its latest annual report, announced plans to increase coal mining capacity to 1 billion tonnes by the financial year 2025-26.
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A previous investigation by Climate Home News showed that European asset managers invested substantially in both NTPC and CIL, helping India’s coal industry to grow rather than phase down in line with international commitments.
Air pollution expert Dahiya said that, while India has lower historical emissions than countries in the Global North and requires flexibility to meet its energy needs, as well as international support to move away from fossil fuels, that did not mean coal companies should be “free to pollute”.
Raheja, of the CSE, said better controls on pollution were also a matter of justice for those living near coal-fired power plants.
“The environmental regulations are critically important for maintaining the health of the environment and of communities residing near coal facilities – even of people far away – as pollution, both through air and water, can be carried to a distance,” Raheja told Climate Home News.
(Reporting by Akshay Deshmane; editing by Sebastian Rodriquez, Megan Rowling and Joe Lo; fact-checking by Matteo Civillini)
The post Indian coal giants pushed for lax pollution rules while ramping up production appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indian coal giants pushed for lax pollution rules while ramping up production
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines