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New UserThe Environment: Optimise Utilisation of Coal Reserves
31 Dec 2015
"2016 will be important in terms of rolling out of three things -- one is with regard to crushing of coal, the second is the preparatory work regarding washing and putting in a new regime for quality (checks)," "Coal Secretary Anil Swarup told PTI in an interview.
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Despite India's honourable commitments to emission control under the COP21 talks at Paris, coal will continue to remain India's largest source of energy to power its economic growth over the next 25 years, with a little help from hydro, solar, wind and nuclear energy. But how could these two contradictory goals be achieved? The answer, says Rajiv Kumar, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, lies in 'Clean Coal'. Or, as environment-friendly as it gets. But use it - we must - before it becomes useless.
Adesynthesis of the commitments at the 21st annual conference of parties (or COP) in Paris makes it evident that India will continue to rely on coal for its energy needs along with the renewed focus on building up capacities for renewable energy based on solar and wind sources. But the good thing about these commitments is that India resolved to use coal in a much cleaner and efficient manner.
India sits on reserves of 301.56 billion tonnes and annually produces 500 million tonnes. The great majority of the output is produced by the public sector monopoly, Coal India Ltd (CIL), practically the only producer of 'commercial coal'. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants this company to double production to one billion tonnes by 2019. At this rate, the reserves can last for the next 200 years. And mind you, these reserves have been estimated at a maximum depth of 1,200 metres, not beyond that. Environmental concerns are being expressed ever more vociferously today about carbon emissions. This would make it difficult to mine in this long term.
Therefore, it is critical to exploit these reserves as quickly as possible, before they become useless. For this, we need to do two things right: a) we should not depend exclusively on monopoly producers like CIL. Instead, we should open up quickly for the biggies of the world, such as BHP Billiton or Rio Tinto, to come in and do commercial mining; b) these biggies have far greater resources and access to technologies to produce coal in a much cleaner and efficient way. We may not like it, but the fact is CIL cannot ramp up production to the level we all would want them to. Like China, we should also be producing three billion tonnes of coal every year. This makes the case much stronger for getting on to commercial mining.
Source: Business Today