Overview

India's thermal power plants account for about 57% of total generation capacity, with 78% of this fleet under twenty years old, making the eventual retirement and repurposing of these assets a defining challenge for the country's energy transition. This publication develops a comprehensive framework for ensuring that the decommissioning or repurposing of TPPs delivers fair and equitable outcomes for the workers, families, informal economies, and settlements that have grown around these plants. Drawing on consultations with energy and human settlement experts, worker unions, plant management, and government officials at every level, it argues that a transition rooted only in technical or financial considerations will fail the most vulnerable, and that a deliberate "just" approach is needed to balance economic development, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

The framework is anchored in five pillars: Transitions and Governance, Planning, Development and Infrastructure, Natural Resources and Environmental Planning, and Capacity and Institutions. It is grounded in a detailed case study of the Kota Super Thermal Power Station (KSTPS) in Rajasthan, which illustrates how plant operations have shaped neighbourhoods, livelihoods, and ecological conditions over four decades. By mapping the vulnerabilities of direct, associated, and allied workers across economic, human, social, and political capital, and by examining policy and regulatory gaps in the existing decommissioning landscape, the publication offers a prospective roadmap that links union, state, and local action with the participation of affected communities.

Key Highlights

• India lacks a dedicated legal mandate governing the decommissioning, clean-up, and repurposing of TPPs, leaving environmental remediation, worker rehabilitation, and land restoration to ambiguous and fragmented provisions; the publication recommends either a new consolidated act or amendments to the EIA Notification, 2006 to make decommissioning plans a binding requirement at both the establishment and retirement stages.
  
  
• The KSTPS case study demonstrates how a single plant supports a layered economy of about 656 permanent employees, 2,012 contractual workers, a 40-50 unit fly ash brick cluster employing about 3,500 people, and a wider ecosystem of cement industries, informal services, and migrant settlements, all of which face differentiated risks at closure that current labour and social security laws do not adequately address.
  
  
• A just transition requires institutional architecture that does not yet exist at the local level; the publication proposes a Transition Cell housed within the relevant Gram Panchayat or Urban Local Body to coordinate decommissioning, identify gaps in housing, social infrastructure, and skilling, and act as a feedback channel to state governments, building on the NITI Aayog three-tier task force model and the Ministry of Power's State-Level Steering Committees for Energy Transition.
  
  
• Misclassification of jurisdictions, top-down master planning, and overlapping clearances under the Air Act, Water Act, hazardous waste rules, and forest laws create significant friction for repurposing; the publication calls for decentralised problem-based planning, coordinated agency action, and a streamlined permit framework that can move plant sites from closure to repurposing without the cumulative burden of multiple sequential clearances.
  
  
• Financing the transition is a critical bottleneck since decommissioning costs are not currently treated as a balance-sheet liability for power generation companies; the publication recommends prior accounting of these costs, the creation of a dedicated Just Transition Fund seeded by repurposed subsidies, CSR contributions, and grant capital, and explicit obligations for GENCOs, TransCos, and Discoms within Power Purchase Agreements to fund remediation and worker support.
  
  
• Procedural justice is as important as distributive justice; the publication recommends institutionalising a social audit mechanism with Citizen Charters, suo-moto disclosures, and active participation of worker unions, civil society, and local communities to ensure that vulnerable workers, particularly informal and contract labour, women, and migrant workers, are not left without voice in transition decisions affecting their livelihoods.

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