CEM India CEM India

CEM India - Abstract

 
CEM India

 
CEM India



Abstract Title: Lowering Particulate Matter Emissions Through Improved Information
Session Choice: Monitoring Techniques: Particulate
Presenter Name: Mr Udit Gupta
Co-authors:Prof Michael Greenstone
Prof Rohini Pande
Dr Nicholas Ryan
Dr Anant Sudarshan
Company/Organisation: J-PAL South Asia at IFMR
Country: India

Abstract Information :

The advent of Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems (CEMS) (Central Pollution Control Board, 2013) represents a tremendous breakthrough in industrial pollution regulation. It has significantly increased the frequency of interaction of regulators with industries, as well as the level of sophistication of data handled by regulators, in addition to improving transparency of information exchange, incentivizing pollution abatement and reducing compliance costs.

We are directly testing the benefits of dramatically improving information quality through the use of CEMS for Particulate Matter (PM) emissions from industrial plants. This pilot is implemented in over 350 solid fuel burning plants in Surat, where rollout of low-cost AC/DC triboelectric CEMS devices is complete, and will produce evidence on the impact of sending high frequency emissions data to regulators and regulated industry. It will also create the monitoring framework necessary to implement markets. The rollout of CEMS also contains an embedded randomized control experiment framework enabling clean measurement of the benefits of high quality information. Data has already been gathered from these plants with a focus on boiler efficiency, and we intend to measure any changes in efficiency driven by continuous monitoring through this experiment.

The use of CEMS allows State Pollution Control Boards to measure the total mass of particulates emitted into the ambient, a quantity that is of direct health importance and proportional to fuel use, but is not measured in the status quo where plant emissions are measured only in terms of concentration of pollutants over a short period of time. Thus plants under CEMS reporting have a greater incentive to conserve kilogrammes of fuel burned relative to the status quo. We expect to see lower overall PM emissions for industries in the treatment group (with PM CEMS instruments) than those in the control group (without PM CEMS devices).