Govt Brings Blue Category For Better Environmental Regulation

This will provide the required incentives to the industries providing critical environmental services by encouraging sustainable practices.

Prominent sectors under this category include waste-to-energy plants, biomining and compressed biogas plants. These industries will now have an extended validity of operation for the essential role they play, particularly in urban areas.

Compressed biogas plants use municipal solid waste, agro-residue, energy crops and weeds to produce bio-gases. Public utilities, which help in managing environmental concerns like landfill maintenance, are also part of this.

Biomining industries use a process to extract valuable materials and reclaim land from old, large dumpsites of solid waste. This industrial process utilises microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi, to break down and separate different components of the waste, resulting in the recovery of recyclables, organic materials, and even some metals.

The contribution of these industries in managing pollution and providing services, like waste management and clean energy, will be rewarded by this decision.

Inclusion Of EES Industries Expected To Improve Regulation...

“The new Blue category of the EES will provide an incentive for the essential services by giving an additional two years’ validity for consent to operate (as per the Pollution Index),” the CPCB said in a communique to the state pollution boards.

Adding to the existing five-year validity, this new incentive means that these industries can now continue to operate for seven years, without having to seek fresh approval.

In February 2025, the apex pollution regulator asked all state boards to adopt the new classification. The CPCB again communicated to the states about the addition of certain compressed biogas plants in the ‘Blue’ category on March 25.

Under the revised classification, the CPCB has now segregated a total of 419 sectors of all kinds of industries into five categories — Red (125), Orange (137), Green (94), White (54), and Blue (9).

By assigning equal weightage to scores resulting from water, air and hazardous waste, a methodology based on Pollution Index (PI) is used for this classification.

The entire PI methodology was developed by the CPCB in 2016, after the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) introduced the concept of categorisation of industries to quantify and measure environmental impact.

The exercise helps in deciding the location of the industries, formulation of norms for inspection and surveillance, pollution caused and societal health impacts.

The Pollution Index (PI) scale lies between ‘0’ and ‘100. While scores in the range of 0-20 represent the least polluting ‘White’ category industries, scores between 60 and 100 denote the most polluting ‘Red’ category.

The ‘Green’ (21-40) and ‘Orange’ (41-59) category industries fall between these two extremes. 

...But Inclusion Of WTE Industries Could Have Been Avoided

Addition of important services of waste management, like composting, biogas, material recovery facilities and sewage treatment plants, is likely to benefit sustainable urban infrastructure development.

However, the inclusion of waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration is a process fraught with environmental risks.

“The WTE process — of burning unsegregated municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce dirty electricity — is a huge retrograde step,” said environment expert C D Kulasekaran, who works with the Centre for Financial Accountability.

A WTE plant produces electricity (by burning waste) that is dirtier than a coal-fired thermal plant. These plants emit more CO2 per unit of electricity.

Before the latest revision, the CPCB classified these WTE industries in the ‘Red’ category, as WTE comes with a PI of 97.6. Kulasekaran said, “With this new categorisation, the CPCB will give an additional two years' validity for consent to pollute.”

In terms of impact on the environment, it would have been better if these WTE industries were excluded from the latest CPCB measure.