Ministry of Coal To Employ Surplus Land For Green Energy Projects

West Bengal Thermal Power Plant To Produce Solar From Multiple Sources

The Ministry of Coal and the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) have joined hands to work for the promotion of green energy. The decision was arrived at during  secretary-level joint meeting between the two ministries.

The MNRE will offer technical, policy and capacity building support, technicians and other functionaries through National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE). The Ministry of  Coal will offer land, capital. Additionally, it will also undertake the execution of solar energy, green hydrogen and other renewable energy projects. Under the cooperation, knowledge partnership through IIT Roorkee, Solar Energy Corporation of India and other resource agencies associated with MNRE shall also be provided.

CPSUs Ministry of Coal, Coal India Limited, NLCIL and Singareni Colliries Company Limited (SCCL) have already set sights on net zero targets. Coal PSUs have installed more than 1600 MW solar energy generation capacity with solar projects of capacity of 500 MW at different stages of development.

Coal firms have surplus land masses, which can be used for the establishment of green hydrogen projects by private investors. Further, coal CPSEs boast de-coaled land mass in the open cast mines. Such sites promise the advantage of naturally available water storage reservoir and head of average 100 meter height. By constructing top reservoir, these de-coaled mines can help convert into pump storage projects. The meeting also arrived at the decision to accelerate such projects.

Coal CPSEs have great land mass in the form of overburden dumps which can be employed for solar projects. It was decided to undertake full assessment and to cover all the government buildings and houses with rooftop solar.

CPSEs under Ministry of Coal will create a generation capacity of about 12 GW by year 2030. Ministry of Coal is in the process of identification of about 10 patches of land of more than 300 acres each so as to offer to private investors for setting up of green hydrogen projects under the policy of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The cooperation between the two ministries follows the recent announcement of the Ministry of Power’s proposal to cut Renewable Generation Obligation (RGO) for coal or lignite power generating stations to at least 6 to 10%. This percentage was earlier 40%.

Open cast mines for green initiatives 

As per Indian scientists, the combination of pumped-hydro storage systems that are linked to solar plants employing mines as the lower reservoir and rivers as the upper reservoir can help reach the  LCOE of $0.2693/kWh. As per the study, “The realization of open-cast coal mines as a pumped storage system for grid-connected PV systems is purely novel. As open-cast coal mines are enormous craters, which are left idle once the coal is extracted, the idea of using the non-functional open-cast mine as PSHP will resolve many practical challenges.”

Overseas, the idea of usage of open cast mines for renewable energy projects is being applied widely. A noteworthy example is that of German multinational energy firm RWE, which has installed 58,000 photovoltaic modules in the Garzweiler opencast mine. The modules also boast two battery storage facilities.