By 2017,India should not need to Import Thermal Coal:Piyush Goyal

New Delhi

Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, and New and Renewable Energy said that by 2017, India should not need to import thermal coal except for the coastal power plants. He said that era of shortages is over in coal sector. Shri Piyush Goyal said this after releasing the India’s report titled ‘The Rising Sun – Disruption on the horizon’ at ENRich 2015, KPMG in India’s annual energy conclave here today. The report was released here today by Shri Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, and New and Renewable Energy and Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (IC) – Petroleum and Natural Gas at the conclave.

The report highlights that solar could scale up substantially to be a significant energy source by 2025, with the market penetration of solar power expected to be 5.7 per cent (54 GW) by 2020 and 12.5 per cent (166GW) by 2025. India aims to reduce emission intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, and solar power is likely to contribute 4 per cent towards this target, the report states. The report talks about how the scale up and competitiveness of solar power could disrupt the traditional generators. The disruptive force is expected to start being felt from 2017 and may accelerate post 2020. In some states which are promoting solar (and also wind power) aggressively, conventional coal generators could see their Plant Load Factors (PLFs) fall by as much as 10-15 per cent by 2020, as solar replaces coal-fired generation in the daytime hours. This effect may speed up post 2020 with the annual addition of large amounts of solar (estimated to exceed by 20GW per year by 2022-23).

The report highlights that the price for solar power has seen a decline; today, in India, solar prices are within 15 per cent of the coal power prices on a levelised basis and, it is expected that that by 2020, solar power prices would be approximately 10 per cent lower than coal power prices. The solar rooftop power, today, is already competitive compared to grid power for many consumers and, as per the report, if combined with storage, it could be cheaper than grid power after 2022 for a large section of the consumers and drive a considerable shift to rooftop power. A ‘Solar House’ that is self-sufficient in energy terms could be a reality within the coming decade.

PIB