Is the Rampal Power Plant really sustainable?
The main raw material of the project is a
fossil fuel, coal, which is not sustainable as
it comes from non-renewable sources
Polin Saha
Rampal is a name of a place and gets its unique identity very recently due to some significant reasons. The most important reason claims to a proposed 1320 megawatt power station at Rampal, Bagerhat, a south-western district in Bangladesh. Another reason is that the place Rampal is near to the worlds largest mangrove forest Sundarbans declared as an UNESCO world heritage site. Here I mention only two identities of the place Rampal through which I would like to describe my writing objectives.
People have already protested for this power plant with a proposed site at Rampal, but we have not yet received an effective solution from authority to refuse the public claims. The claims come from both local and international community including citizens, various non-profit activists, environmentalists, UNESCO and so on. If I analyze most of these claims either in favor or not in favor of the Rampal plant, I see this project violates several environmental laws and rules; specifically, the following guidelines of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report of the project. As per project authority comments, they are committed to reduce the environmental impacts as guided in the environmental assessment report. But we are not getting an assurance concerning an alternative project site as opposed to Rampal. In this regard of site selection, the authorities of the project infringe the obligatory countrys environmental development policies as required to set-up a new project in an ecological sensitive area. On site selection of the project, it is no doubt that the existing environmental violations of the project press on us towards un-sustainability practices when we have already agreed upon with the global commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. I would say, it is a conflict of our interest whether we do sustainability and unsustainability practices at the same time.
Since the Rampal power plant is a controversial project in our development path, hence the sustainability assessment of the project is urgent in line with the globally accepted sustainability principles. These principles are designated literally and to be assessed in the development trend if we really plan for a future project in our sustainable development journey. In such an assessment, we can explain several policies and development drivers for taking into account the sustainability impacts of a project, but possibly the most significant four principles are to anticipate all the sustainability policies and their implementation to normalize the project impacts. However, the project violations of sustainability principles could be elaborated in following ways:
Violating sustainability principle 1: in a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the Earths crust. If we see the project Rampal, main raw material is a fossil fuel coal, which is not sustainable as it comes from non-renewable sources. This energy source is nonrenewable since the exact usage of raw materials cannot be replenished in a short period of time. Usage of more coal promotes more extraction of the earth crust which violates the sustainability principles.
Violating sustainability principle 2: concentrations of substances produced by society - the Rampal plant is going to burn huge amount of coal (4.72 million tons per year), that means the burning of this coal is certainly expected to release a large amount of fly ash, dust, carbon, sulfur and other toxic elements into the air. Consequently, the society must face the serious environmental challenges like green house gases leading to local and global warming, acid rain and hazardous waste materials. In other ways, operating supply chain management of different plant products (inputs and outputs) releases the toxic materials both into the air and water.
Violating sustainability principle 3: degradation by physical means - according to the planned project operation, the Rampal project must degrade the water body, agricultural land and the biodiversity of the Sundarbans. The plant location is only 14 kilometers far from the Sundarbans, whereas, considering the expert report, such types of projects should be set-up 25 kilometers radius distance from the ecologically sensitive area. Another big concern, the massive amount of raw materials will be carried out through about 59 ships with each of having 80,000 ton capacity, which certainly degrade the water path of Poshur river as used for carrying goods from the port to the plant. About 40 kilometers of the river will be used as its flow path cuts through the world largest mangrove forest Sundarbans. Other aspects, coal mining is continually needed for supply of raw materials, which degrade landmass and the surrounding water body where the mining occurs.
Violating sustainability principle 4: people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. A report of Khulna University says that about 0.2 million people are dependent on the Sundarbans for their livelihoods. More specifically, almost 22% peoples livelihoods are directly based on the Sundarbans wood resources; 5% for non-timber forest product; 69% for the aquatic resources and 4% for other purposes. Peoples livelihood needs will be severely violated in many ways if the project is being operated at Rampal. For example, fishing or other agricultural practices will be shrink temporally and possibly the direct negative impacts on all the local livelihoods.
Suspecting the violations of these sustainability principles, the proposed project has several drawbacks connecting to its site specifically. And, the claimed issues are linked direct or indirectly with a site specific plant operation that is mentioned through above mentioned violations. Beyond the site selection of the plant, extraction as well as usage of raw materials in power plant is also a vital issue for assessing sustainability in such energy development process. For critical sustainable energy generation, renewable energy sources (commonly solar, wind or biomass) are generally recommended to adopt with the latest technology. Even, the project has good purpose in providing a mega supply of electricity for all citizens to access electricity by 2020, but in principle, our understanding of sustainable development cannot support the existing operational paths of the Rampal power plant. Therefore, the long term of the project sustainability will reduce our quality of lives rather than providing short term services to the public.
However, it can be said that in sustainable process that the public acceptance of any project is very important before going through its operational phase, especially, when our think is of shifting from development to sustainable development. In case of European Union, poor public acceptances push the authority to modify many mega development issues like water policies, energy recovery technologies, waste recovery or any other green innovation in working together. So, at the time on global agreement with SDGs, we need to work for ensuring clean energy (goal number 7) and accordingly, the raw materials of the proposed project should be sourced on use of renewable resources. Not only that, most of the goals of SDGs will be controlled directly or indirectly over the impacts of Rampal power plant. For example, the targeted goals of SDGs should be achieved in our future activities directly related to the climate action (goal 13), life below water (goal 14) and life on land (goal 15); and indirectly in reducing poverty (goal 1), hunger (goal 2), promoting good health and wellbeing (goal 3), decent work and economic growth (goal 8), sustainable industry and innovation (goal 9), sustainable cities and communities (goal 11), responsible consumption and production (goal 12), and peace, justice and strong institutions (goal 16).
Finally, in connecting between the proposed Rampal project and sustainable development process, a multi-stakeholder engagement is required in any decision making process for ensuring long term project and commercial viability keeping common peoples interest at mind. In a sustainable process, the agenda should not be for a group of people, political or for achieving self interest. Like many other countries, we should now create a scope for ensuring acceptability over a proposed mega power plant project, since it has not been yet accepted either locally or internationally.
The writer is a researcher onsustainability at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division
