In this July 6, 2017 photo, domestically produced petroleum coke rests in an open air depot in Moradabad about 178 kilometers (110 miles) from New Delhi, India. Petcoke, the bottom-of-the-barrel waste from refining Canadian tar sands crude and other heavy oils, is cheaper and burns hotter than coal. But it also contains more planet-warming carbon and far more heart- and lung-damaging sulfur. Critics say it is making a bad situation worse across India. About 1.1 million Indians die prematurely as a result of outdoor air pollution every year, according to the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and industry. Within a decade, India’s petcoke appetite grew so voracious that it began producing and selling its own, and Indian refineries today are making about as much as the country is importing. (AP Photo/Vaishnavee Sharma)
The Supreme Court on Wednesday relaxed its ban on the use of petroleum coke (petcoke) and allowed cement and limestone industries to use it.
A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta, however, asked the Ministry of Environment and Forests to frame a scheme within four weeks to contain the illegal diversion of petcoke from cement industries to other fields. The decision to modify its ban was largely due to the government’s submissions that petcoke is used as an ingredient and not as fuel in the cement industry. The sulphur is mostly absorbed in the process of cement-making.
Wednesday’s order is a step away from the court’s earlier stance that urged States and Union Territories to move forward towards a nationwide ban on the use of petcoke and furnace oil to power up industries in an attempt to fight pollution.
