India's Thirst for Coal Will Kill Millions

India is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies. It's booming—​some analysts project its GDP growth rate to overtake China by 2016, when it could be expanding at a rate of 7.4 percent annually. It's also primed to pass China as the planet's most populous country, which means more people than anywhere on Earth will be exposed to the economy's deadly engine: dirty coal power.

As of 2013, nearly ​60 percent of India's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, which, in addition to planet-warming carbon emissions, spew out harmful particulate matter (PM) that causes lung disease, asthma, and cancer. The amount of coal power produced in India is expected to triple by 2030.

​A new report from researchers with Conservation Action Trust India and Urban Emissions India hones in on that astronomical coal boom, calculating the impact it will have on the nation's health. The findings are disturbing, naturally. They reveal that by 2030, the new age of coal-fired power plants will lead to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of premature deaths.

Today, ambient particulate matter found in pollution is already one of India's leading killers. According to data presented by the ​Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, outdoor air pollution kills nearly 700,000 Indians a year—the next worst killer is smoking. Of that, 80,000 to 115,000 deaths are attributed to emissions from coal plants. By 2030, the toll will have risen to 186,500 to 229,500 a year.

So, by 2030, a given five year period will mean a million dead. And by then more than 42 million will have come down with asthma. The report advocates stricter emissions standards and monitoring, which could help reduce the projected tolls.

Those numbers are startling, because they begin to resemble the coal-fired chaos in China, where as many as ​670,000 citizens die prematurely each year due to exposure from coal plant emissions, according to a study from Tsinghua University. India's hunger for cheap, dirty carbon isn't as bad as China's (which produces more electricity, and ​coal accounts for nearly 70 percent of it), but it's getting there.

And that's what makes this report especially disconcerting—it is reflective of a global trend in industrializing nations. Over the last decade, despite knowledge of its health woes and climate impact, coal use has ​surged 50 percent worldwide. The International Energy Agency expects coal demand to ​grow at least until 2019. Globally, coal pollution will be killing many millions annually.

There are reasons to be optimistic. India's new government, led by Narenda Modi, aims to usher in ​a veritable solar power revolution. He's ​investing heavily in clean energy. But he's keeping the coal, too.

​Climate scientists and environmentalists say that if we're to avert the worst of global warming, we need to start leaving the black carbon in the ground—starting now, not 2019. The same goes for averting a major public health crisis. The more coal plants get built, the more people will perish.