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On April 28, 2022, India canceled several passenger trains to allow for faster movement of coal carriages. The railways are also planning to add 100,000 more wagons to their fleet and construct dedicated freight corridors to deliver goods faster. On the other hand, Delhi’s power minister claims that its power plants are left with less than a day of coal which can cause blackouts and affect crucial services like the metro and government hospitals. The country is facing a critical coal shortage.
Coal reserves at India's power plants have declined almost 17% since the start of April 2022 and are barely a third of the required levels.
But the question is, Why?
70% of India’s power demand is met by Thermal power plants. The country has both a large scale of domestic and imported coal reserves to meet these enormous requirements. India is the secondlargest importer of coal after China. But from 2021, the international prices for coal started reaching record highs because of the rise in Industrial demand, International price fluctuations and the latest being the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All this seriously affected India's coal imports. At the same time, India also has an increasing power demand. In 2022, the energy demand increased to 132 (billion units) BU per month from 106.6 BU per month in 2019. The sudden surge in demand can be attributed to the country's industries as they pick up operations after the second wave of the COVID 19 pandemic. And despite having the 4th largest reserves in the world, the domestic producers of coal are unable to meet the demands.
The rising heat waves have also added extra pressure on the nearly exhausted thermal power plants. According to reports, the country’s power demand crossed a record 201 GW mark on April 26, 2022, as large parts of the country reeled under sweltering heat. The coal shortage has disrupted the power generation of multiple states including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The coal crisis comes at a time when India has been trying to reduce its dependency on nonrenewable sources of energy to meet climate targets. In November 2021, at the UN climate change meeting in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that by 2030 India will generate 50% of its energy from nonfossil sources and will also install 500 GW of renewable energy. But the current crisis shows India’s neckdeep dependence on coal and the challenges in meeting its climate change targets.