Coal Plan for Power Sector During Thirteenth Five Year Plan

Coal is considered as an indispensable fuel source for the Indian Power sector to grow in parallel to the Economy. Coal availability and requirement have always been a major concern for thermal power plants. The domestic coal production in the country is insufficient to fully meet the requirement of the sector and this necessitates for imported coal to meet the additional demand. 12th Five Year Plan is expected to end with a shortage of 190MT of shortage in domestic and needs to be imported. Keeping this in view the 13th Five Year Plan projects the following statements regarding the availability and requirement of coal. 

1.   A planned capacity of 66,000 MW additional coal based capacity proposed to be added in the XIII Plan. Coal for 20,000 MW capacity will be met from the additional production of 100 million tonnes from captive blocks, coal linkages already exist for 20,000 MW and coal for the balance 26,000 MW would need to be met from both the incremental production from CIL as well as imports.
2. Out of the envisaged incremental coal production of 180 million tonnes from CIL in the XIII Plan, 80% or 144 million tonnes is earmarked for power sector which would support about 32,000 MW additional capacity at the rate of 4.5 million tonnes per 1000 MW capacity. The existing linkages for the 20,000 MW capacity, include this additional availability and thus coal for about 14,000 MW capacities (46,000 MW - 32,000 MW) would need to be tied up.
3.   As per the recent allocation of fourteen coal blocks to Government Companies/ Corporation for power generation, four large blocks namely Balumuda, Banai, Chandrabila and Kuda Nali Luburi have been allocated to NTPC for meeting the requirement of a capacity of 9,780 MW and exploration is ongoing in three of these blocks i.e. Balumuda, Banai and Chandrabila and the geological reports are expected to be available by January, 2016, June, 2015 and April, 2014 respectively for these three blocks. The exploration in Kuda Nali Luburi Block is yet to be commenced. Thus, NTPC should aim at expediting the exploration in these blocks such that these blocks can be brought into production latest by middle of XIII Plan and this would help in realising some 5000 MW to 8000 MW capacity. 
4. Ministry of Coal is considering offering of four explored blocks for tariff based power plants through bidding and these four blocks can support an additional generation capacity of about 10,000 MW. With concerted efforts, these four blocks could be brought into production by the beginning of the XIII Plan as they are the explored blocks. In addition, there are couple of State utilities which have been allocated coal blocks in the recent past (Ten blocks) and there is scope for them to advance the production schedules such that some additional capacity is feasible to be added in the XIII Plan. This would also add up in meeting the gap of 26,000 MW as mentioned above.
5. Ten blocks allocated to state government companies are unexplored. Coal production from these blocks could support 20,000 MW capacity. Considering the process of exploration and obtaining forest & environment clearance and land acquisition, none of the above mines are expected to commence production in XIII Plan period. Efforts must be made to get necessary clearances for at least few of the blocks to have additional coal production to support 5000 MW capacity from these blocks. Ministry of Power and Ministry of Coal agreed to the suggestion

Development of these coal blocks, advantages of enhanced efficiency by switching over to super-critical technology in case of all the future generation units and to build the same into the envisaged coal requirement, mechanism to incentivize state governments for soliciting their cooperation in expediting coal block development are few important notes that all the concerned ministries should take into account to keep the conventional fuel coal into a more stable position