India's Future Energy Business Plan – Shop the World for More Coal

Despite significant technological advances since the Iron Age, there are few materials on Earth that can replace coal in the steel-making process. There are two varieties of the fuel: metallurgical or coking coal, used in manufacturing, and thermal or steam coal, used in thermal power plants. India is a major importer of coke, and in recent times, supply shortages of thermal coal have been seen, as well. If the gaps get any larger, experts say India could become the largest importer of coal in the world by 2020.
Together with power generation, manufacturing helps make India the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Steel and cement, in turn, are driving the construction of buildings, highways and other new infrastructure in developing nations. Even as steel demand from the West fell with the economic recession, developing countries picked up their own production, according to the World Steel Association.

In India, the metal is linked to development in the energy, transport and housing sectors. State-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd., which runs Bokaro, is planning to double its hot metal production in two years, and more steelmakers are moving to the mineral-rich belt of India that includes coal-rich Jharkhand and Orissa.

India’s only source of coke comes from the fields of Jharia, 30 miles away from Bokaro, but the coal extracted here accounts for only a fraction of the needs of steelmakers. The steel plants have adapted by importing coal. The fuel travels a long distance to make it to this remote corner of India. While state-owned Coal India Ltd. supplies 95 percent of cooler-burning steam coal used to generate electricity in thermal power plants, India is a net importer of coke, according to the company’s chairman, Partha Bhattacharyya.

“We can only meet 25 percent of India’s metallurgical coal needs,” he said.

New York Times