According to recently released report by Greenpeace India, India is the largest emitter of sulphur dioxide (SO2) in the world. The findings of report were based on data obtained from NASA’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite.

• India consitutes more than 15% of all anthropogenic SO2 hotspots detected by NASA OMI satellite
• Most all of these anthropogenic emissions in India are because of coal-burning. This is because majority of coal-based power plants in India lack flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) technology to reduce air pollution.
• Singrauli, Neyveli, Jharsuguda, Talcher, Korba, Chennai, Kutch, Ramagundam, Chandrapur and Koradi thermal power plants/clusters are major emission hotspots in India
• Union Environment Ministry for the first time had SO2 emission limits for coal-fired power plants in December 2015 to combat pollution levels.

Largest SO2 emission hotspots have been found in Russia, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Serbia.