Coal would remain at the centre stage in India with its share in energy mix not declining below 46% in 2047, claimed a report titled ‘Energising India’, jointly prepared by the NITI Aayog and the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. (PTI)

Coal would remain at the centre stage in India with its share in energy mix not declining below 46% in 2047, claimed a report titled ‘Energising India’, jointly prepared by the NITI Aayog and the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. The study found that coal and nuclear would continue to operate as base load units for power generation. The report said that the share of electricity generation through coal based power plants will almost be around 55% in 2032. In FY17, coal power plants generated more than 85% of the total electricity produced in the country. The share of gas based electricity can go up to 22%-26% (from present ~4%) in the low gas price and long term market driven scenario respectively due to lower prices. In order to achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement, 50% of coal-based power generation capacity will have to be supercritical technology based by 2047, the report added. Share of clean coal technology was 11.35% in 2015.

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It pointed that although public attention focuses heavily on green energy sources, almost 86 % of the reduction in emissions in low-carbon scenario comes from action on the demand side to improve energy efficiency and only 14% from the supply side. The projected peak demand is estimated to be 235 GW at the end of FY22. The total coal requirement in FY22 has been estimated as 727 metric tonne (MT), including imported coal of 50 MT. In 2047, per capita electricity consumption of India is envisaged to become 3581-3588 unit from 1,075 unit in FY16. This indicates that even in 2047, India’s per capita electricity consumption would be still lower than the US (12,000 unit), China (4,000 unit) and Germany (7,000 unit).