IEA report: Coal power generation in India likely to rise

India's coal fired power generation will continue to rise due to the increasing fleet of coal power plants and robust power demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report today.

Coal-fired power generation in India may increase at nearly 4 percent per year through 2022, the Paris based Agency said adding that import of thermal coal is likely to reduce in the light of the various initiatives being taken by the government to reduce coal imports.

"However, import of coking coal is projected to increase over five percent per year through 2022," the report said on account of rising steel consumption in industries such as ship building, defense and vehicle manufacturing as well in housing and railways.

The report also noted that global demand for coal should remain nearly flat between 2017 and 2022, resulting in a decade of stagnation for coal consumption.

"The energy system is evolving at a rapid pace all around us, with a more diversifying fuel mix, and the cost of technologies going down. But while everything else is changing, global coal demand remains the same,"said Keisuke Sadamori, the International Energy Agency's director for energy markets and security.

Sadamori also pointed out that for India they expect a strong growth in the deployment of renewable energy but that will not meet the expanding appetite for energy in a strongly growing economy and the gap will be filled by coal.

" On the sustainability front, despite Carbon Capture, utilisation and storage being a proven technology around the world, its deployment lags behind other low emissions technologies and needs urgent global action if it is to meet its climate change mitigation potential," Sadamori said highlighting that Indian innovation in capture technologies could play an important part in the global cost reduction efforts.

Coal based thermal power plants constitute 67 percent of India's power generation capacity, further more coal based electricity forms 80 percent of power on the electrical grid. Coal is expected to remain the mainstay of India's power generation for next two to three decades.

"Our total energy supply currently is heavily dependent on coal and lignite. While I am confident that India will be able to meet its renewable energy target of 175 GW by 2022, given our requirement for base load and psychology of people and challenges of storage and transmission of renewable power, coal and coal-based power will continue to grow at the same pace and will remain our energy mainstay till 2030," Susheel Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Coal said while expressing his views on the report.