JOIN USAs India’s coal output struggles to keep up with the country’s growing demand for electricity, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said the country needed to look beyond coal-fired power plants, but expressed concern over agitations in states against nuclear power plants.
“The country is having energy famine. Coal linkages and coal production are fine, but other resources needed to be exploited,” Mukherjee said at an industry event here.
India is the world’s third-largest coal producer after China and the United States but the production has not kept pace with the demand in the recent times. The finance minister said that agitations were going on in almost every state against the nuclear power plants and that it prevented the country from achieving its energy needs.
Referring to the Kudankulam nuclear plant agitations he, however said, “thank God that we have been able to resolve the issue of the Kudankulam”. Energy experts have in the past laid emphasis on ramping up nuclear power capacity to meet India’s growing energy needs.
According to estimates, India’s total power demand-supply gap will widen to 412 Gigawatt or 412,000 Megawatt by 2050. In absence of other sources, the country would need to import 1.6 billion tonnes of coal annuallyto generate enough power to meet this demand.
At a time when almost 16 to17 per cent of the energy needs in developed economies are being met with nuclear power, India lags far behind.