Press & Media
- Indian Express
- September 22, 2023
India has about 300 billion tonnes of proven and unproven reserves, the majority of which is low-rank high ash coal. By enriching and exploiting Indian coal endowments through gasification and carbon capture a clean coal-based economy for power, chemicals, fuels, steel, oil, and fertilisers can enable a $50 billion direct increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) while creating employment for over half-a-million people, reducing imports by over $30 billion and cutting the current account deficit by 50 per cent.
Our analysis show that with the right policy initiatives and market design, hyper-scale coal gasification, based on low-grade Indian coal, along with CCUS can enable large-scale carbon-neutral industries such as methanol, ammonia/fertiliser, olefins, steel, and power while enhancing India’s oil production from its depleting oilfields. The methanol can be used for producing methanol-based chemicals and olefins for plastics and as a substitute for petrol, diesel and LPG. Close to 15 per cent of the petrol used today in vehicles can be substituted by methanol. Additionally, 20 per cent of imported diesel and cooking gas can be substituted by domestically produced methanol. Over 15 per cent of plastics/olefins feedstock based on imported crude oil heavy distillates can be replaced by coal gasification-based methanol saving over $5 billion in imported naphtha. Similarly, India as a nation has a plan of producing 300 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of steel by 2030. It is envisioned that most of this production will happen through the energy and carbon-emission intensive blast furnace route using imported coking coal. However, a significant portion of such steel making, estimated at about 50 mtpa of capacity, can be through the gas-based direct reduction route based on coal gasification and CCUS. This will reduce coking coal imports by over $6 billion while cutting carbon emissions by over 50 per cent.Captured CO2 based Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) can increase India’s oil production by up to 30 per cent resulting in $4 billion worth of excess production from the ageing oilfields.
Policy enabled successful commercial implementation of gasification and CCUS at scale can thus, be a game changer for India.
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