The Uttar Pradesh power engineers and consumers organisations have opposed the Union Energy Ministry for allowing coal import, alleging that the policy will ruin the power sector.
They said with the price of coal in the international market ruling above 140 US dollar per metric ton, the price of the electricity generated from imported coal will be unaffordable as it will not be less then Rs 12 per unit.
Alarmed by the sharp surge in the demand for electricity by over 20 per cent in energy terms, the Union Energy on Thursday ordered all imported coal based power plants to operate at full capacity. Looking at the emergency situation, the ministry directed all states and all generating companies based on domestic coal to import at least 10 per cent of their requirement of coal for blending.
The inability of Coal India Limited to meet the coal requirement of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), state-owned power generation companies and independent power plants has forced the Centre to go for coal import. Against the total requirement of over six crore metric tons of coal per annum, the production by CIL is at the same level.
An official order of the Energy ministry read, “The demand for power has gone up by almost 20 per cent in energy terms. The supply of domestic coal has increased but the increase in the supply is not sufficient to meet the increased demand for power. This is leading to load shedding in different areas. Because of the mismatch between the daily consumption of coal for power generation and the daily receipt of coal at the power plants, the stocks of coal at the power plants have been
declining at a worrisome
rate.”
The international price of coal has gone up unprecedentedly. It is currently around 140 US dollars per metric ton. As a result of this, the import of coal for blending, which was of the order of 37 million tons in 2015-16 has gone down, leading to more pressure on domestic coal.
The imported coal-based power generation capacity is around 17,600 megawatt and it is entirely in the private sector. The power purchase agreements (PPAs) for imported coal-based plants do not have adequate provision for pass-through of the entire increase in the international coal
price.