Coal minister meets power, environment counterparts; discuss ways to augment fuel availability

Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday met his counterparts in the power and environment ministries and discussed ways to augment the fuel availability for power plants in an environment-friendly manner.

The meeting assumes significance as on one hand the country has more than enough coal stock while on the other hand it is grappling with falling power demand due to coronavirus-forced lockdown.

"Met Mr @PrakashJavdekar along with Mr RajKSinghIndia and discussed ways to enhance the availability of domestic coal for power generation in an environmentally sustainable manner. Concrete policy interventions shall be brought shortly," Joshi tweeted.

The coal minister had very recently written to state chief ministers asking them now to import the dry fuel and take domestic supply of fuel from state-owned CIL, which has the fossil fuel in abundance.

The country's coal import increased marginally by 3.2 per cent to 242.97 million tonnes (MT) in the just-concluded fiscal 2019-20.

In a bid to give a boost to coal demand hit by the ongoing lockdown, the government has also announced a slew of measures like increased dry fuel supply for linkage consumers.

Joshi announced several relief measures for Coal India Ltd (CIL) consumers, including the power sector, in the wake of situation arising from corona virus, the coal ministry had said.

The ministry also approved relaxation in quantity of coal for linkage consumers.

"Now, they can lift quantities even beyond their contracted quantity, if coal is available at the mines," the ministry had said.

It also announced that no performance incentive shall be levied on power consumers if CIL supplies more than the upper limit of Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA).

About 80 per cent of India's domestic coal production comes from CIL.

CIL recorded an all-time high coal output of 84.36 million tonnes (MT) during March 2020, registering 6.5 per cent growth compared to 79.19 MT it produced in March 2019.

"In producing 3.85 MT on 30 March, CIL has set up a new record for the highest ever production in a day since inception," an official statement had said.

The company closed the fiscal 2019-20 with annual coal production of 602.14 MT.

Coming back strongly in the last quarter of FY'20, CIL clocked a robust 9.9 per cent production growth compared to same quarter of 2018-19.