Control the environmental problems in thermal power plants

	Constant concern about waste pollution from coal-fired power
	Environmental protection obligatory to development process
	Formosa faces new waste penalties

It is expected that by 2020, there will be 12 more coal thermal power projects in operation

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, there have been 20 coal thermal power plants in operation with a total capacity of 13.110 MW that consume 45 million tons of coal per year with more than 15,700 million tons of ash and gypsum discharged over the country per year.

It is expected that by 2020 there will be 12 more coal thermal power projects in operation with a total capacity of 24.370 MW.

To November 2016, the plants have made a full report of environment impact assessment and submitted to the Ministry of Natural Recourses and Environment for approval. Some plants that have been put into operation without a certificate of completion of environmental protection works such as: Vung Anh, Vinh Tan 2, Duyen Hai 1, Formosa Ha Tinh, have also rushed to finish the certificates as prescribed.

The plants have installed an electrostatic precipitator system (ESP), NOx and SO2 processing system (2 plants using former technologies, and not installing an SO2 processing system are Pha Lai 1 thermal power plant and Ninh Binh thermal power plant). Therefore, gas emissions from the plants have been processed in accordance with QCVN 22:2009/BTNMT.

The control of smoke and gas is a major concern, with current technologies, when operating the boilers or the boiler’s capacity is low, they must burn oils FO, HFO while the electrostatic precipitator system has not been put into operation due to risk of explosion, so there is black gas from the chimney. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is directing the plants to quickly solve this problem.

Regarding the control of hazardous waste, as a result of inspections, hazardous wastes are strictly controlled in compliance with regulations. However, some plants still have many issues such as: collection and classification of hazardous wastes are not radical, storage of hazardous wastes are built in contravention of regulations, and management of documents on hazardous wastes are not carefully controlled. The Ministry of Industry and Trade has directed investors and enterprises to handle and try to overcome these issues.

Concerning the enforcement of law on environmental protection of the thermal power plants, the Ministry of Industry and Trade realized that although policies on environmental protection are improving, they have many problems. Specifically, many administrative procedures have the same content, objectives and nature; lack of specific regulations on responsibility of ministries and agencies in enforcement of law on environment and lack of enforcement guidelines.

To develop thermal power plants which meet requirements on environmental protection and sustainable development in the coming time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will clarify the responsibility, assignment, decentralization and collaboration among ministries/agencies, the Central government and localities in environment management.

The Ministry of Industry and trade also reviewed projects with risks of pollution to inspect and supervise their environmental protection and handle the violations as prescribed.

For projects with risks of environmental pollution, the Ministry undertakes to strictly evaluate the items on environmental protection from the initial design, appraise the risk to the environment for investment projects and monitor the environmental protection at the projects during construction.

27 projects and factories on the environmental pollution list VCN- These 27 projects belong to 7 groups, corporations, and large corporations under the control of the ...

Remarkably, the Ministry of Industry and Trade firmly refuses to invest in projects with technologies that affect the environment, gradually renews and reforms technologies for existing plants to reduce waste, and meliorate the environment, installs an automatic environmental supervision and monitoring system and connects to local competent authorities as described.