Production growth is driven by expanding domestic demand. Between 2011 and 2023, India commissioned 14.3 gigawatts (GW) of coal-burning cogeneration capacity, which is equivalent to 6% of the current installed capacity of the country’s carbon power plants. Over the same period, coal-fired power output gained 17%, which corresponds to 216 terawatt-hours (TWh) in absolute terms, comparable with the combined annual electricity consumption of Belgium and the Netherlands. The share of coal in India’s electricity generation amounted to 75% last year, still the potential for increasing solid fuel use in the power sector is far from exhausted. In July 2024, Global Energy Monitor placed India as the world’s second in terms of in-construction coal-burning CHP capacity (29.5 GW), China being the leader with 173.5 GW.
Coal generation is facilitated by the introduction of fuel-saving “ultra-supercritical” coal-burning technologies which provide higher efficiency (44-46%) than can be achieved with “supercritical” (37-40%) and “subcritical” co-generation processes (33-37%), due in particular to the difference in steam boiler operating temperature and pressure. In India, just 2% of operational coal-burning capacity is ultra-supercritical; for projects under construction, the figure is 13% and for planned projects, 50%, according to Global Energy Monitor.
As such, India’s coal mining industry has achieved safety gains over the recent years. According to the Ministry of Coal, the number of heavy injuries in coal mines and pits came down from 126 in 2016 to 58 in 2021, while the number of fatal incidents dropped from 61 to 25 (more recent data not available). The safety improvement is associated with the diminishing role of deep mining, which accounted for less than 4% of domestic coal supply in 2023.
Growing demand from the metals industry will be an important driver of India’s coal production in years to come. As of April 2024, India ranked second globally in total capacity of basic oxygen furnaces under construction (24.4 mln tons per year vs 43.5 mln tons per year in China), the smelting process using coking coal. However in terms of total capacity of planned carbon-intensive steelmaking projects, India was the global leader (152.7 mln tons per year vs 54.7 mln tons per year in China).
