Exempt exploratory drilling from clearance, consider it ‘forest activity’, says government panel

Exploratory drilling in forest areas for hydroelectric and pumped storage projects should be considered forest activity and made exempt from obtaining forest clearance, the Forest Advisory Committee has said, adding to a spate of recent policy changes that will ease the environmental compliance burden for pumped hydro and other development projects.

The exemption will allow for the felling of up to 100 trees for exploratory drilling in forest areas and consider it “forest activity,” so as to keep it outside the purview of the Forest (Conservation) Act, which mandates clearance for non-forest activity.

The Committee’s decision was made after the Power Ministry’s secretary argued that similar exemptions were already in place for mining activities, and that the purpose of setting up hydropower and pumped storage projects was to “to reduce dependence on fossil fuel based electricity” and increase the share of renewable energy “to tackle climate change”.

The Forest Advisory Committee is a statutory body that advises the government on matters related to the conservation and use of forest land for non-forestry purposes under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

The Ministry of Power is in the midst of redrafting its hydropower policy “in order to give boost to development of hydro power projects for clean energy,” the secretary wrote in his letter to the Committee, which met to discuss the issue on July 4. The policy redraft includes promoting pumped storage hydro projects – a type of hydropower system that generates electricity by moving water from one reservoir to another at different elevations.

In her budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said a policy to promote pumped storage would be brought out to facilitate “smooth integration of the growing share of renewable energy with its variable and intermittent nature in the energy mix.” Companies such as Adani Green, JSW Energy, Greenko, Torrent Power, and Tata Power are proponents of some of the largest proposed pumped storage projects, and are likely to benefit. Earlier this year, the Environment Ministry granted clearance for nearly 12 gigawatts of pumped storage plants from these companies.

Experts are concerned that such exemptions may alter the precautionary intent of the Forest (Conservation) Act, which regulates non-forest activity. “The understanding appears to be that exploration activities are benign, therefore can be unencumbered. Regulatory exemptions are also being made for sectors that are considered as important for the economy by the government. It needs to be examined whether specific sectors or activities can be added as ‘non-forest activity’ through a notification,” said Kanchi Kohli, an independent legal researcher.

The growth of renewable energy has spotlighted the need for its storage, which is a challenge. India has sanctioned over 55,000 megawatt of pumped storage projects which are at various stages of survey and investigation and detailed project report preparation.

Exemption for exploration in forests

In a little-publicised change made in November 2023, the Ministry of Environment notified various conditions and exemptions for “reconnaissance, prospecting, investigation or exploration” activities in forest areas.

The notification said that surveys for development projects like hydroelectric projects, wind energy farms and transmission lines could be exempt from seeking prior forest clearance as long as they “do not involve any breaking of forest land or cutting of trees, and operations are restricted to clearing of bushes and lopping of trees branches for purpose of sighting.”

Surveys for prospective mining projects like seismic surveys which require drilling, however, were granted a more lenient exemption. The notification said surveys that “involve breaking of forest land” by drilling bore holes and digging trenches would be exempt from clearance as long as such surveys limited felling to 100 trees in the survey area.

It also allowed the exemption on the condition that the boreholes be four inches in diameter, with no more than 25 boreholes drilled per 10 square kilometers. These exploration activities can go on for two years, and agencies and state governments must monitor compliance “at least once a year,” according to the notification.

Ecologist and cofounder of Nature Conservation Foundation, MD Madhusudan, called the conditions “absurd and unscientific”.

“There will always be competing interests on forest land, and many of these interests will be for legitimate reasons that have to do with development. But these directions use the language of forest conservation to subvert the very provisions of the law,” he said, adding, “Drilling and felling trees is neither forest adjacent activity, nor is it conservation activity. If this is worthy of being deemed forest activity, then what activity is left for forests to be protected against?”

The exemption of exploration for mining, and reclassifying it as “forest activity,” follows years of negotiations with other arms of government. In 2019, a Niti Aayog committee tasked with making recommendations to increase domestic coal production, said that exploration for mining activities should be exempt from obtaining forest clearance. In 2022, the Ministry of Mines proposed exploration for mining activities be removed from forest clearance processes and wrote to the Ministry of Environment with the proposal.

A similar exemption for hydro and pumped hydro projects will help project developers draft their detailed project reports faster by at least three months, the Secretary told the Forest Advisory Committee on 4 July. The Committee then said the exemption could be extended to hydro power and pumped storage plants because drilling for development projects is “a temporary activity” carried out to gather geological information.

“Surveys involving drilling for hydel and other developmental projects in the forest area are of relatively lesser intensity and does not result in any permanent change in the forest land use. Such preliminary drilling is crucial for project design, preparation of detailed project report and estimating the financial provisions of the proposed development project,” the Committee said in its final decision. It added that “if the finding of such drillings indicate the involvement of forest land during their project implementation,” project proponents will have to apply for forest clearance anyway.

Renewable storage

India’s growing share of renewable energy from variable sources like solar and wind have prompted questions on how it can be efficiently stored, since viable stationary batteries are still in development. High costs, tariffs, and long gestation periods have hindered the growth of pumped hydro storage projects in India, but this is slowly changing. Last year, the Ministry of Power released guidelines to promote pumped storage, which are called “water batteries,” recommending states do away with charging premiums and reimbursing some costs to project proponents.

Pumped storage is best suited for renewable energy storage, which India will need in substantial quantities as the renewable energy penetration increases, said Ammu Susanna Jacob, a research scientist at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy. “We already have the hydrotechnology for it, and over the long term, it becomes cheaper over its lifespan. It also provides the flexibility that Indian power grid requires,” she said.

Pumped storage plants differ from conventional hydroelectric power plants in that the water stored in the reservoirs can be re-used till the plant is in operation, as opposed to releasing it downstream. The lower reservoirs of open loop storage plants are connected to a continuous source of water, like a river, while closed loop plants are at an off river site and neither reservoir is connected to a natural continuous source. Closed loop pumped storage systems are thought to have fewer environmental impacts on aquatic ecosystems compared to open loop systems.

For environmental clearance purposes, pumped storage plants have been considered on par with hydroelectric plants, requiring environmental impact assessments and public hearings before being cleared. In May last year, however, the Ministry of Environment amended the clearance norms to make it easier for pumped hydro plants to obtain clearance.

According to the notification, pumped storage projects will be assessed based on specific terms of reference issued by the central government. It also said that pumped storage projects could be exempt from conducting environmental impact assessments if they don’t require forest/wildlife clearance, do not result in the creation of a new reservoir, and where existing reservoirs are not expanded, leading to submergence of additional land.

The exemptions could be a concern even for closed loop pumped storage systems. In West Bengal’s Puralia, a closed loop pumped storage plant led to the submergence of dense forest and the obstruction of streams.

This article was first published on Mongabay.