I just wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself, give a little background, and then highlight some key points about the scrubber market and the FGD market opportunity in India. My name is Ravi Krishnan. I've been in the air pollution control business for over 20 years, primarily operating out of the United States, and have been involved in NOx, SOx control and several other projects. I used to run a burner company and was co-founder of an SCR injector technology we eventually sold to a major Fortune 500 company in 2009 for automotive applications, so I have a history in air pollution control.
In addition, my involvement with India has spanned over 15 years. I worked closely with the Adani Group and Tata Power for almost seven years, bringing in expatriates to commission and start up their supercritical power plants. Many Americans who worked in India to start up and commission some of the large supercritical units were either employed by my company or sent from my organization. We had a lot of interaction and worked directly with some of the chairmen and promoters of these different groups.
The interaction with India has been very solid, and our engagement was quite active in shaping the norms themselves. We were supported by companies around the world to help educate the Central Pollution Control Board and the Ministry of Environment and Forests at a time when SCR and FGD technologies were at very intensive stages in terms of technology, cost, and other factors. That's a bit of background. I believe Bob invited me here to discuss my recent FGD market study, so I'd like to quickly go through some highlights. If you have any questions, you can reach me directly by email. My company website is krishnaninc.com, and my email address is ravi@krishnaninc.com.
With that, let me quickly run through this. You may hear some background noise, but I'm in a quiet place, so hopefully, there won't be any interference. As you all know, the SO2 regulations have been introduced, and as Mr. Dalvi just mentioned, the deadlines have been extended to 2022. When the regulations were first announced, it was unbelievable because some units barely had six to twelve months to comply. As most of you know, it is very difficult to install an SCR or an FGD in such a short time period.
Another major issue that Indian plants always face is that Indian coal has very high ash content, and many of these technologies have not been proven effective with such high-ash fuels. This has given Indian utilities reason to challenge the technology's capability and its applicability in the Indian context.
Additionally, cost is a significant concern. None of the utilities or IPPs anticipated the extent of the costs involved. Many Indian power purchase agreements do not include a rate-based pass-through clause, leading to uncertainty about how the costs would actually be recovered. Due to these and other reasons, many IPPs requested relief, resulting in the extension of the deadlines to 2022. Some plants will need to comply before that.
So it's a staggering deadline because they don't want all plants to be shut down during a certain period and cause disruptions to the grid. That's the essence of the regulations.
Krishnan & Associates provides specialized market intelligence, regulatory research and market forecasts on global clean energy technologies and power & energy markets. For more information email us at info@krishnaninc.com