The Centre and state governments need to come together to ensure energy efficiency and conservation and support the setting up of better infrastructure for non-conventional energy generation and transmission. [...] The NGT, on numerous occasions, has directed the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to issue stricter norms for effluent and sewage treatment plants, and has assisted the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) in making its proposals more effective.b In its 2015 Paris Climate Agreement commitments, India had pledged to reduce its intensity of GDP emissions by 33-35 percent of 2005 lev. [...] In the same year of their launch in 2019, nine of the CETPs set up in the state’s industrial areas under this initiative were found to have violated safety standards, forcing the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) to intervene.8 Not all state governments’ industrial policies have a calibrated green focus. [...] The eco-industrial initiative there came much later, a joint project of the Naroda Industrial Association (NIA) and the University of Kaiserslautern (Germany), to find solutions for better treatment of the estate’s toxic industrial waste. [...] The Vapi industrial estate was once named as a “critically polluted” industrial area.26 As a result, the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has been monitoring the quality and quantity of effluents from each unit in the estate and the functioning of its CETP.
- Pages
- 32
- Published in
- India
