India being a developing nation has been hugely dependent on ‘black gold’ for a long time to meet a major chunk of its energy demands. This dependency has put us in the second spot on the world’s list of both production and consumption of coal. Coal has not just been a mere source of energy but also a primary source of employment, revenue, economic activity, and above all ‘livelihood’ for a lot of states. To meet the national energy and industrial demands, India produces as much as 756 million tons of coal and a bulk of it is extracted from the central and eastern states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and the Southern state of Telangana. These energy hubs have been major contributors to the development of the country along with being the crucial drivers of the regional economy. Although, when we peek into the future, the redundancy of the outdated technology, inefficiency, and especially the everlasting environmental impact overshadows their historic contribution.

The scientific community has collectively warned the world that any rise in worldwide average temperatures beyond 2 degrees Celsius could have a devastating impact on large parts of the world, causing rise in sea levels, stoking tropical storms, and worsening droughts and floods. The Paris Agreement which is a legally binding international treaty on climate change was adopted by 196 parties at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, on December 12, 2015, and was enforced on November 4, 2016. As per the Paris accord, the world converged on addressing the issue of climate change, exhibiting sheer determination to keep this increase of temperature worldwide well below 2 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial levels. This has forced the world to look for energy alternatives other than non-renewable resources. 

India being one of the founding members of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions intensity of its gross domestic product 33% (2005 as the base year) to 35% and increase non-fossil fuel power capacity to 40% from 28% by 2030. Our goal is to swiftly move away from fossil energy and increase renewable electricity capacity, generating 175 GW by 2022 and subsequently 450 GW by 2030 from non-fossil sources.

While India seems to be on track with the second emission reduction commitment, which started in 2013 and lasted till 2020, as compared to most of the Annex 1 nations under the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol, our ties to fossil energy carriers seem to deepen over time with the upcoming plans for the expansion of the Indian Coal Complex by the government. The coal capacity in the Indian power system will increase to 269 GW by 2030 compared to 235 GW in 2019. Coal being a contested resource, not only leaves a Bigfoot on global carbon emission, but it also does not address the inter-linked socio-ecological challenges of poverty and unemployment, environmental degradation, and the climate crisis. While India’s coal trajectory is crucial to meeting global climate targets, unfortunately, the GOI does not seem to have any plans currently for a coal phase-out.

Coal has been the core driver of the industrial revolution across the globe, although, it comes with a price and India has long been taxed since the introduction of industries during the colonial period. In the face of development, coal comes with its own baggage of problems like land dispossession, appropriation of livelihood, water, and air pollution, and so on. Presently, there are as many as 459 operational coal mines in the 51 districts in 13 states of India and invariability can be observed across the regions while looking into socio-economic dependency at the sub-national level.

The coal industry is one of the largest single sector employers in India with as many as  744,984 direct coal mining jobs in the year 2019-2020. Although, the disparity can be observed across the region in terms of job distribution depending upon the region and the type of mine that’s operational in the area. For example, the Dhanbad district in Jharkhand is home to the highest number of coal mining workers and it alone has 122,348 jobs whereas Pakur on the other hand has only 63. The difference in the type of mine operational in a particular area has a direct influence on the number of jobs in the region. It is observed that districts with open cast mines have a lesser number of direct coal jobs as compared to the districts with underground mines, although the production of coal is found to be more in the former than the later. For an instance, the Korba district in Chhattisgarh which produces 120 metric tons of coal has 30 thousand fewer jobs as compared to Dhanbad which produces only 30 Metric tons of coal each year. Needless to mention, the workers of all such mines suffer severe health hazards due to poor working conditions. As per a study, ‘the average life expectancy in the coal mines for those starting work at 15 years was found to be 58.91 years and 49.23 years for surface and underground workers respectively’.

There are other issues around coal-fired power plants. Workers and people living around coal mines are susceptible to diseases caused by inhaling coal dust and drinking polluted water. As per the ‘Coal Kills’ a joint report by Conservation Action Trust, Urban Emissions and Greenpeace, not moving away from coal is causing 80,000 to 115,000 premature deaths annually in India. The long-term effects of the coal mining industry can be hazardous linking millions of cases of asthma and respiratory ailments to coal exposure, which might get transcended to the future generation if we don’t transit to non-fossil energy sources.

Although there has been no new announcement of a coal-fired power plant in the past twelve months, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) still projects India will reach 269 GW of coal-fired capacity by 2030 which would require adding 58 GW of net new capacity additions – or about 6.4GW annually. This dependency on coal can be attributed to the high variability in production, storage and distribution of renewable energy across the states, thus, lack of expansion of reliable energy access through non-fossil means. Nevertheless, thermal power is not feasible as compared to the ongoing cost reductions of renewables. For an instance, government induced incentives and other initiatives in solar power are turning out to be way more cost-effective than a few of the existing coal-fired plants.

A cumulative account of these facts and challenges is likely to make any new coal-fired power plants a stranded asset in the near future. Even though India doesn’t seem to start building any new coal-powered plants, our coal-powered capacity will peak by 2025 and in 2030 about half of India’s electricity will still come from coal. Keeping these aspects in mind, it is important that our coal capacity requirements be urgently revised. Needless to mention, while moving to a cleaner energy source is a top priority, it is also very important to have a ‘just transition’ for coal workers whose livelihood is dependent on coal production.

Amidst these challenges, we have pledged to address the world climate change crisis and so far we have been modestly pioneering the movement, and now it is for us to recalibrate through the problems in hand and redefine the archaic ways of achieving industrial prosperity.

India has been at the forefront of climate change issues since our proactive participation in the first-ever United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. For an economy that is heavily dependent on coal, to stand by our promise and achieve a complete coal phase-out by 2060, smoothly transiting to the future of renewables will be a mammoth challenge. While, the current demand and supply chain and other socio-economic dynamics around thermal energy inhibits us to drastically switch from fossil energy, in order to address the future challenges of poverty, climate change, increasing sea level, and submerging coastal cities it is inevitable to transit whole-heartedly to green energy. Undoubtedly a way forward has to be a sustainable one, yet, for a nation that is witnessing rapid development, only a tailor-made shade of green can successfully canvas the crisis of the future and answer the present ‘energy dilemma’.