Thermal Power Sector Sustainability: A Framework for Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Introduction

Energy or power is one of the most rudiments of modern society. A life without energy is a life without accessing the opportunities by the people provided by the modern world. In a modern society indispensable social services are heavily reliant on a reliable source of energy supply, known as electrical energy (Electricity). Without electricity, it is not possible to function effectively the state of health and education of a developing country. Lacking in access to electricity entails growing in problems of health hazards, diseases and improper education. Power is the major contributor and vital source for economic development of any developing country across the globe. This is why accessing energy for all in a modern developing and developed countries is the basic need and prime importance in the global scenario. However, for safe and reliable generation of power through using fossil fuels like coal, is the only way to provide electricity at affordable cost compared to other forms of energy. Being coal as cheapest, it will continue for next 2-3 decades as backbone of generating electricity in global context. With regards to this, Indian economy depends on its power sufficiency making a suitable leading position in world economy. India mostly depends on thermal power plants using coal as fuel, the only fossil fuel easily available in large quantity in the country, to maintain its energy requirement. It has been seen that, energy generated by the coal based thermal power plants is about 50% of the total electrical energy produced in the country (Rao and Kumar, 2014). Growing use of coal in thermal power plants confronts increasing in environmental issues. Thermal power plants using coal as fuel are treated as one of the major sources of environmental pollution across the globe. It causes degradation of land use, air pollution, water contamination, health hazards, greenhouse gas emission, waste generation, degradation of aquatic life, scarce of natural resources etc. (Adham et al., 2015). Increasing serious negative impacts on environmental as well as economic and societal issues by thermal power plants have been faced major challenges since one or two decades (Govindan et al., 2013). Increasing in consumption of natural resources in unsustainable manner, by the thermal power plants results consensus regarding awareness for environmental issues due to arising of incessant pressure from government, society, customers and stake-holders needs to be focused (Tyagi et al., 2015). Owing to this it needs to incorporate and implement sustainable supply chain strategy to deal with various problems and issues associated with supply chain to reduce environmental and societal hazards (Jayaram and Avittathur, 2015; Mathiyazhagan et al., 2014;

Diabat et al., 2014). UN Brundtland Commission defined sustainability is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). According to the Environmental Protection Agency (USA), sustainability is a principle in which “everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations”. However, in order to implement sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices in thermal power plants seems like a difficult task owing to its dependence on a number of various interrelated factors. These factors which can be categorized mainly into two groups, likely enablers and barriers. Enabler is one that encourages SSCM adoption and the barrier is one that offers hindrance to SSCM.

Interdependence and knowledge regarding of these influential factors will enable the decision makers of the organization to consider the best possible suitable strategy to reduce the negative impacts of barriers and to implement the benefits of the enablers. So, managerial implications of SSCM practices in thermal power plants and understanding their mutual interdependence is important to face the challenges, barriers and the global competition to achieve sustainable success.