Project at a glance
- Sixty-two out of 114 industries in red category (heavily polluting) have been covered under Odisha Star Rating Program
- Eight sectors, including Aluminum Smelter, Captive Power Plant (CPP), Cement, Fertilizer, Integrated Steel, Independent Power Plants (IPP), Pulp & Paper, and Sponge Iron, were covered
- As of November 2018, seven industries in Odisha have received 5-Star rating and 49 have received 1-Star rating.
Why this study
The Government of Odisha has collaborated with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago’s India team (EPIC-India) and signed a statement of intent to advance its commitments for new research, knowledge, and capacity-building partnerships.
Besides informing residents about the polluting industries around them, the program aims at strengthening Odisha State Pollution Control Board’s (OSPCB) regulatory efforts to ensure compliance. This engagement in Odisha is supported by the Tata Centre for Development at UChicago.
Approach
Building on its experience of supporting Maharashtra Pollution Control Board in designing a star rating program for industries, the EPIC-India team worked with OSPCB to launch an information disclosure program through a star-rating scheme (www.ospcb.info).
As part of the partnership, EPIC-India has set up a knowledge cell at OSPCB and researchers are working with its officials to improve environmental regulations. In the first year (2018) of the partnership, EPIC-India worked closely with the OSPCB to effectively utilize Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) for regulation. This includes jointly developing and implementing systematic protocols for calibration and automating data quality checks and compliance analysis.
The star rating program uses the CEMS data to display information about industrial emissions in the public domain—the most polluting industries are given a 1-star rating, and the best performing industries are given a 5-Star rating.
This program is expected to put additional pressure on polluting industries and recognize the efforts of environmentally conscious industries. The ratings are updated regularly using the CEMS data. Additionally, EPIC-India, with the support from OSPCB, is conducting inspection and recalibration of CEMS devices to improve data quality.
EPIC-India is also working with the Energy Department of the Government of Odisha on power sector distribution reforms related to loss-reduction measures.
For this project, the Energy Policy Institute gratefully acknowledges generous research support provided by the Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at UChicago.