When Japans Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants emergency shut-down and radiation leak sent tremors through nuclear establishments all over the world, it improved the prospects of fossil fuels like coal at least for the near future in the country because renewable energy alternatives are still expensive and unreliable.
AN Jha, chairman and managing director of Coal India, says, Overall there will be added thrust on fossil fuels and renewable sources of energy. Since renewable energy is taking time to become a practical alternative, coal is the obvious fuel for India at the present because the need to have energy security scores over urgency of carbon emission reduction. Though India is the third biggest greenhouse gases emitter in the world with 5% share, it lags behind China (23%) and the United States (22%). Nevertheless, the country is committed to reduce emission intensity by 20-15% by 2020.
India is also the worlds third largest coal producer and coal-based power plants contribute more than 50% of the installed power capacity in India. In the new circumstances coals role can only increase as the country continues to pursue its energy expansion plans to overcome peak power shortage of 12% and sustain an economic growth rate of 8-9%. Experts foresee the need to add installed power capacity of 600 GW by 2030, up from 164 GW today.
L Madhusudan Rao, chairman, Lanco Group, says, Most part of this growth will come from coal-based electricity generation. Coal, which already happens to be the mainstay of energy sources in India, shall become even more important going forward as the appetite for growth in India is huge and energy demand is increasing massively. Group company Lanco Infratech, which is one of the biggest independent power producers in the country, is bidding aggressively for coal reserves.
It is also a question of what can be built economically in time to meet heavy demand, according to a spokesman of Essar Energy, an integrated energy company. He says, To achieve this, producing power, which is affordable for most Indians, coal-fired generation projects are important right now.India is already promoting cleaner forms of coal-based power generation by incentivising deployment of supercritical technology, which generates lower emissions than standard coal generation, in the XII Plan. Essar Energy is also investing in supercritical technology by building a $1.11-billion 1,320 mw Salaya II plant, he adds.
Tapas Kumar Lahiry, chairman-cum-managing director of Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, which is into mining of coal and allied activities, too says, Coal is likely to pick up and there is a need more than ever before to explore alternative ways of coal mining from a peoples perspective, which are more comprehensive and address social as well as environmental issues. He proposes turning coal sites into self-sufficient and self-sustaining corporate villages over a period of time.
Agreeing with him that coal is here to stay and going to play an even bigger role, Vinay Kumar Singh, chairman-cum-managing director of Northern Coalfields, adds, What we need to do is to speed up operations and address deficiencies in supply chain. At the same time, we should continue our focus on improving the quality of coal. About 20 washeries to clean up coal are proposed to be set up in the next 4-5 years in the country. Such basic initiatives become when cutting edge technologies like carbon capture & storage (CCS) are still being tested globally.
Coal is also at an advantage because renewable energy sources are still to deliver on a large scale. RK Pachauri, chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director-general of Teri, says, Though we have a target of setting up 20 GW of solar energy by 2020, we have not made big progress in that direction. We need to accelerate deployment of renewable sources of energy like solar, which will bring down costs. Since it will some take time to do so and coal is not a solution, we need to improve energy efficiency in a big way in the meantime. Till then coal seems set to strengthen its status as black gold in the country, despite issues of limited availability, poor quality and carbon emissions.
Source: The Financial Express
Publsihed on 5 April 2011