India has been observing a heavy decline in coal growth since 2015, according to an Energydesk analysis.
For over 10 years, the annual growth average was over six percent. However, since the last two years, India’s coal use has just grown by an average of 2.2 percent, thus showing very low growth.
According to the report by Energydesk, the sluggish economic growth could possibly be the beginning of a longer reduction. India is predicted to be the next big coal frontier keeping in mind the schemes regarding new coal power plants by the Narendra Modi government.
The coal industry in India has been facing a lot of inconvenience recently like water shortages causing the power plants to run for only half the time, overcapacity issues and well as air pollution. Apart from this, renewables have also become very cost-competitive.
The possible reasons for decline in coal consumption growth is attributed to reduced burning by industry, cement and iron sectors, serious decline in production from mines as well as a fall in imports.
India imported less than 191 million metric tonnes (mmt) of coal in the period of April 2016-March 2017. This signifies a 6.3 percent drop from previous financial year’s import and leads to an increase in sales of domestic coal from CIL and SCCl.
Source: ANI
