As India’s power demand is rising at a significant pace aided by growing industrial and household consumption, the Coal Ministry is working on developing the rail-sea-rail (R-S-R) route to account for 5 per cent of the country’s total supply during the peak power demand season.
Besides, the Ministries of Coal, Ports, Shipping andWaterways as well as Railways are working on developing the inland waterways for evacuating coal from IB valley and Talcher coalfields in Odisha, which account for a lion’s share of coal supplied to power plants in the country.
India’s coal production stood at 892 million tonne (mt) during FY23. The power sector continued to be the largest consumer of domestic coal, accounting for a total dispatch of 737.9 mt.
“Government is committed to meet the rising coal demand. Ministry almost doubled coal production in the last nine years. Coastal and riverine transport can aid not just in meeting demand, but also reduce pollution and decongest logistics in east India,” Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said at a press conference marking nine years of the government.
Various estimates by the government and private sector have put India’s power demand to grow by 6-7 per cent on an annual basis in FY24.
Coal Secretary Amrit Lal Meena said, “Government is promoting coal evacuation through river routes. Coal from IB Valley and Talcher Coalfields in Odisha can be evacuated through national waterways (NW) 5 and 64. These waterways are being considered for coal evacuation.”
Inland Waterways
The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) is working on feasibility reports for these waterways. Recently, there was a meeting of Secretaries from Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Railways and Coal. An agreement was reached for some form of institutional arrangement to try to develop these two waterways, he added.
“The proposal is being firmed up and a detailed project report (DPR) is being prepared. The government will soon come out with the requisite modalities,” Meena noted.
Coal Ministry Additional Secretary M Nagaraju explained that inland waterways is a very environment friendly coal evacuation mechanism and it also reduces stress on the rail and road networks to some extent. The government intends to create a 360 degree coal logistics policy that addresses all the bottlenecks in logistics.
Coastal shipping
The Coal Secretary informed that about 20 per cent of the coal from Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL) is transported through coastal shipping to Gencos in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as well as to some power plants of NTPC.
“Now, the all rail route movement of coal from MCL to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, and West UP is congested. So, we wanted movement of coal from Paradip via coastal shipping to western coast. NTPC has transported coal for the Kudgi plant (Karnataka), as well as Dadri (Uttar Pradesh) and Jhajjar (Haryana) plants. Around 1.5-2 rakes per day are being transported from Paradip to the western coast,” he added.
Comparing costs
Meena said that the ministry has been requesting governments of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra to promote it a little bit. So, as and when there is congestion in the rail routes this additional capacity can come handy.
“In terms of costs of evacuating coal from east to west India, the all rail route is about ₹4,700 per tonne including cost of coal. R-S-R is around ₹7,000 per tonne. But the same grade of coal when imported is ₹10,000. So, its little costly compared to the all rail route but cheaper than imported coal. We need to have 5 per cent of our coal evacuation capacity through R-S-R route to western side so as to meet the peak demand,” the Secretary added.
