Burning bright

In 2021, few major developments have taken place in the field of energy policy and technology, which might change, in near future, the existing methods the world uses in the generation and distribution of energy.

A nuclear fusion reactor in China has set a new record for sustaining high temperatures after running five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, reports the Independent.

A study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) revealed that the photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals (used in a solar cell) can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a matrix. Scientists believe that these findings could significantly increase the efficiency of solar cells.

TerraPower, a start-up co-founded by Bill Gates to revolutionise designs for nuclear reactors, has chosen Kemmerer, (USA), as the preferred location for its first demonstration reactor. It aims to build the plant in the frontier-era coal town by 2028. As per a November 17, 2021 report by CNBC, it will cost about USD four billion to build the plant, with half of that money coming from TerraPower and the other half from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Programme.

It is reported that the EU is planning to label energy from nuclear power and natural gas as 'green' sources for investment despite internal disagreement over whether they truly qualify as sustainable options. It may be mentioned that major economies in Europe are phasing out their traditional nuclear reactors. This move may be aimed to transfer obsolete nuclear technology to developing economies like India.

Revival of coal — the most neglected energy source since the 1950s

Coal still plays a significant role in the energy mix, especially in the generation of electricity. Table 1 reveals that in 2020, the share of coal in the global electricity generation was 35 per cent and the share of renewables was 12 per cent. As per a report titled 'Coal 2021: Analysis and Forecast to 2024' by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the overall global coal demand was expected to grow by six per cent in 2021. Coal consumption would be around 7,906 million tonnes and it was set to rise to 8,025 MT by 2022. Global coal power generation was expected to increase by nine per cent in 2021.

While emerging economies like China and India rely heavily on coal for electricity generation (refer to table 1), advanced countries like Germany and USA also still depend on coal for their electric supply. Reports suggest that their dependence on coal is increasing.

Energy consumption in Germany — the pioneer in renewable energy generation — has increased in 2021. However, a year of depressed wind power production has let the share of renewables in the country's power mix shrink, while coal power made a strong comeback.

The electricity generated by coal-fired power plants in the United States is projected to post its first increase in seven years. The US Energy Information Administration forecasts that the output of this type of power in 2021 would grow 22 per cent from the preceding year to mark the first rise since 2014.

China has completed the first 1,000-megawatt unit of the Shanghaimiao plant, the biggest of its kind under construction in the country. It is claimed that the plant's technology was the world's most efficient one — with the lowest rates of coal and water consumption.

Economic Times reported that China is responsible for more than half of global coal-fired power generation and was expected to see a nine per cent year-on-year increase in 2021.

Indonesia, the world's top exporter of thermal coal and China's largest overseas supplier, has announced a ban on coal exports in January 2022 to avoid outages at its own generators, reports Reuters.

India's coal sector

Since the 1960s, coal, which is in abundance in the eastern and central parts of India, got marginalised and policymakers started relying more on petroleum as a major energy source. While the country became increasingly dependent on imported crude oil, readily available coal remained neglected. For almost a century, hellish fires have been allowed to burn millions of tonnes of coal deep underground in Jharia. Since 1916, such fires have burned through more than 41 million tonnes of coal, worth billions of dollars. According to experts, Jharia has enough coal to burn for another 3,800 years. As of May 2020, there are roughly 70 fires that currently burn in the Jharia coalfield — the largest coal mine fire complex in the world.

Coal's share in India's energy mix declined till the end of the last century. In 1960-61, the share of coal in India's energy mix was 74.1 per cent which declined to 34.65 per cent in 2001-02. Then its share bounced to 55 per cent in 2009, and in 2020 also, it retained the same share in the primary energy mix of the country. Coal's share in India's electricity generation (refer to Table 1) is as high as 72 per cent compared to renewables' share of 9.7 per cent. In 2022, coal's share is likely to increase as the government may axe the coal cess for a clean power plant. Mint reported on December 28 last year that the waiver is expected to translate into a total concession of around Rs 28,000 crore for coal-fuelled projects that meet sulphur oxides (SOx) norms by installing flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) equipment.

Over the past decade, coal production in India has gone up substantially from 556.4 million tonnes in 2012-13 to 730.9 million tonnes in 2019-20. Though the provisional figures of 2020-21 show a marginal decline in production due to the pandemic, it is likely to cross the pre-pandemic figures in the current year. In the year 2020-21, 95.64 per cent of coal production in India was from opencast mines (684.862 MT) and the rest 4.36 per cent was from underground mines (31.222 MT). As per the Geological Survey of India, the geological reserve of coal in India — as on April 1, 2020 — was 3,44,021 million tonnes.

But the major area of concern is India's dependence on other countries for coal. Imports amount to more than 25 per cent of total consumption. And for coking coal, almost half of the requirements are imported. In 2019-20, a very nominal amount of coal was exported to Nepal (0.618 MT) and Bangladesh (0.104 MT)

It is reported that Adani Enterprises Ltd., the country's largest trader of imported thermal coal, will deliver one million tonnes to state-run NTPC which, in October, issued its first tender for coal imports in more than two years, reports NDTV.

Coal is not only used to generate energy alone. It is essential for the production of steel, cement, fertiliser, and cooking gas. Subsidies provided by the government to naphtha and furnace oil for use as feedstock for fertiliser production made coal-based fertiliser unviable in India. Similarly, subsidised LPG could not compete with coal gas produced at Dankuni Coal Complex. Another advantage of coal is that unlike nuclear, petroleum and solar energy, coal does not require much-complicated technology for extraction and distribution. It is a more democratic and decentralised fuel when compared to other modern energy sources.

Energy is a complex environmental, economic, technological, and political issue. The new coal project at Deocha-Pachami coal block, India's largest coal-mining project slated to come up in West Bengal, should be addressed from these perspectives.

Views expressed are personal