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A global network of the coal industry, the World Coal Association (WCA) promotes the industry's relevance to economies and engages countries for sustainable use of the fossil fuel. On the sidelines of its conference in Delhi, WCA's chief executive Benjamin Sporton spoke to DNA regarding prominence of coal in India's present and future energy plans and Paris deal. Excerpts from the interview.

 

Your report had mentioned last year that India's coal consumption is only going to increase. But in the wake of Paris ratification, do you think your assessment will differ?

 

India, along with 18 other countries actually identified a role for high-efficiency low emission (HELE) coal fired power generation as part of its climate commitments that it made in the lead up to Paris, in their INDC's. These countries said we are going to use coal, therefore we are going to focus on the role for HELE and help reduce emissions. Quite to the contrary of saying that because of Paris agreement, coal does not have a role to play, I think it makes it clear that it does and that modern, low-emission coal technologies have an important role to play as a part of the Paris agreement.

 

In terms of HELE, in your assessment, do you think Indian companies have moved on that technology on a pace that is ideal. Because not many companies are equipped with super-critical technology.

Most of the power plants use the older sub-critical technology. When we look at the power plants planned in the future about half of them will use HELE technology, and the other half will be sub-critical technology. But I know that the government is quite clear in its view that no new power plant should be built unless it is using the high-efficiency technology. So, I think, the clear pathway is to move towards this technology in India and elsewhere in the world. In places like India, they probably need support to make that happen and there is a role of the international community to come in and help with the financing.

 

The world has to come forward and help India to use clean coal technology, how will that pan out? We have already seen that WTO ruled against India in the solar energy case.

We should be looking for international mechanism to help India to use coal in the most efficient way possible. One of the things that the World Coal Association has talked about is an idea for a platform to accelerate coal efficiency. The idea is we help the countries with regulatory systems, finance to deploy new technology. I think for those countries that have identified a role for having technology in the climate plan that they submitted in the lead up to Paris, there is a very good argument that we are moving towards CoP 22 in Marrakech.

 

How does WCA come into the picture here?

WCA put out this idea last year to accelerate coal efficiency and we ran a workshop in Indonesia. It brought together technology providers, financiers and others to look at a roadmap for a more efficient coal technology and I will like to do a similar thing next year in India. We have been in preliminary talks with Essar, Adani, NTPC, all power generators. We talked to investors too, to get a better picture of how new technologies can be deployed.

 

As far extraction is concerned, obsolete methods are still being used. As an industry body, how will you engage companies here to stop unsafe practices?

For WCA members, safety is the number one priority, it is the first thing CEOs and members think about while starting work. A lot of good practices can be shared from our member companies to learn about safety. We have got the two largest Chinese companies as WCA members, and over the last decade we have seen there has been incredible improvement in mine safety in China.

Source:DNA