Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
Strange times ahead for the coal sector
As CarbonCopy reported in the middle of last year, India’s energy policy is distinctly muddled.
By 2030, the ruling NDA government says oil demand will double; and gas demand will treble. It has also told Coal India to boost coal production to one billion tonnes by 2024 – up from 600 million tonnes in 2018-19 – and replace imported coal. It is also auctioning coalblocks to commercial miners.
In tandem, the country has an ambitious renewable energy target — 450 GW by 2030, up from the current 86 GW. Big plans aside, India’s economy is not growing fast enough to absorb all this ambition.
One fallout? In the absence of a policy roadmap, pricing will determine whether India will see an energy transition.
In September last year, CarbonCopy began taking a closer look at the economics of India’s principal fuels. We started with the government’s claim that gas would account for 15% of India’s energy mix by 2030 – and concluded domestic gas is too limited, and imported gas not competitive enough, for that to happen. Coal is a different story. It’s cheap. But the industry which consumes most of it – coal-based power – is shedding competitiveness.
And so, this three-part series on where India’s coal sector is headed.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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