Action plan for clean industry: report of the task force on clean industry

Air pollution in Delhi has surged to crisis level in recent years and has become a major concern for public health. As shown in Figure 1, air pollution crisis in Delhi National Capital Territory (NCT) and surrounding region has become a crisis because of the large population exposed to its health impacts. The recorded mean 3 concentration of PM in Delhi was 292 µg/m in 2016 to 10 which more than 25 million inhabitants were exposed 3 (compared to 104 μg/m in Mumbai with 21 million 3 inhabitants exposed or 92 μg/m in Beijing with 20 million inhabitants exposed (WHO, 2018). With the aim of involving diverse stakeholders to improve air quality in the airshed, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) partnered with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) under the Cleaner Air Better Life Initiative in November 2016. The first meeting of the initiative took place on 05 June 2017. Subsequently, four task forces were constituted by NITI Aayog to formulate appropriate strategies for addressing the sources of air pollution. These task forces were on: Biomass Management, Clean Fuel, Clean Transportation and Clean Industry. Of these, the task forces on Biomass Management, Clean Fuel and Clean Transportation have submitted their reports 1 which are now in the public domain . The report of this task force on clean industry addresses sources of air pollution whose contribution is significant but have received somewhat less attention such as fugitive dust from construction and roads, fly ash from coal use (both, in thermal power plants and other establishments), and stack emissions from thermal power plants.