More than 90% of India’s population lives in areas where the air quality is below the World Health Organization’s standard, with coal fired power plants being a major contributor to this pollution. To combat this growing issue in 2014 the Ministry of Environment and Forest had imposed 34% ash limit on all NTPC’s power plants. Previously these power plants had to rely on manual laboratory data, taking up to 24 hours to receive a result, by which time the out of spec coal had already been burnt.