Coal news and updates

NTPC needs 100 mt additional coal for upcoming projects

April 22: NTPC Ltd, India’s largest power utility, needs an additional 90-100 million tons (mt) of coal for its upcoming thermal power capacity, a senior company official said.

“We have 23,839 MW of new capacity under construction. Of this, around 93% or 22,220 MW will be coal-based. For this, we will need an additional supply of 90-100 mt of coal per annum,” the official said.

He said that the utility looks forward to increased domestic supply to meet its future demand for coal.

“We expect domestic coal production to increase and if the situation warrants, we would like to restrict our imports in coming years. The decisions, however, would depend on how the domestic supply augments,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the coal import target for NTPC Ltd’s power plants for the year 2015-16 has been raised by Central Electricity Authority (CEA) by 32.53% to 22.00 mt from a low of 16.60 mt in 2014-15.