‘India’s coal reserves may exhaust by 2040′

Stressing the need to employ new mining technologies, a top PSU official said India is likely to run out of its 60-70 billion tonnes of coal reserves by 2040-41 if the demand continues to grow at the present pace.

“The demand for coal will reach two billion tonnes mark by 2016-17. We need to grow at the rate of 17-18 per cent from the present 6-7 per cent to meet this growing demand,” Coal India Ltd (CIL) Chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya said at the ICC Coal Summit here.
“We need to employ new mining technologies to go deeper to explore the untapped resources, otherwise by 2040-41 our present coal blocks will run out of reserves due to the growing demand from consuming industries,” he said.

Business Standard