India has a Plan to Replace Coal With Renewables: Environment Secretary

Reduction of coal consumption is not a one-day process and India has a long-term plan to gradually replace coal with renewable energy, a government official has confirmed

Reduction of coal consumption is not a one-day process and India has a long-term plan to gradually replace coal with renewable energy, Union Environment Secretary C K Mishra said on Monday.

Coal-based plants will continue using coal but a long term plan was in place to reduce its consumption, the secretary said.

“Reduction of coal is not a one-day process. We have a plan in place. A long-term plan where we will replace coal with renewable energy slowly to achieve the goal announced by the prime minister to reach 450 gigawatts.

“But plants which are already coal-based will continue to consume coal,” Mishra said while addressing the media on the first day of the five-day meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III Sixth Assessment Report.

On the issue of reducing coal consumption and carbon emissions, he said, “We have already 80 GW renewable energy replace coal in the last 5 years and we are moving towards it but we cannot deny that coal will still continue to be required for some time in India”.

The secretary also acknowledged that the demand for electricity in India will continue to rise due to which coal cannot be totally banned. He said this does not mean that the government is not working on the process to replace coal with alternative renewable energy.

“We already have 80 GW of renewable in the last 2-3 years. The ultimate idea is the reduction of coal but we cannot deny that coal will still continue to be required for some time in India,” Mishra said.

The IPCC Working Group III is working on the Sixth Assessment Report to mitigate climate change with over 200 authors, in which 12 are from India.

Jim Skea, co-chair of Working Group III also highlighted the role of the Sixth Assessment Report. “Building on previous Working Group III assessments, this report will emphasise what can be done in the near term to mitigate climate change and how mitigation actions can be enabled through policy, institution-building, and finance,” he said.

He also added that India will be playing a key role in the preparation of this report in terms of intellect and finances.