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The World’s Largest Coal Miner Should “Aggressively” Seek Solar Energy and Continue Closing Smaller Mines
The coal mining company also wants to compete in India’s solar energy auctions and win projects by offering the lowest prices for renewable energy. This marks a significant shift for the company, which produces most of India’s coal.
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Miner Decides to Close Coal Operations and Enter Solar Energy
“Coal, as you know, our mining company is likely to lose business over the next two to three decades. Solar energy will gradually take over (from) coal as a major energy supplier in the coming years,” said CIL President Pramod Agarwal in an interview with Reuters.
The company’s solar energy project with NLC India will be worth ₹125 billion (US$ 1.73 billion; £1.26 billion), with CIL expected to invest about half of that amount by 2024. The group closed 82 mines in the three years up to March 2020 and reduced its workforce by 18,600 employees.
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Solar-powered ice factory in the Amazon that eliminated a 5-hour trip to Manaus, prevents the loss of up to two-thirds of the fish, and now ensures income for more than 30 riverside families.
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Every time a river flows into the sea, an amount of energy equivalent to a 120-meter waterfall is silently wasted, but Japan has just inaugurated the world’s first power plant that captures this waste and transforms it into electricity 24 hours a day without sun, wind, or fuel.
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Silicon Valley bets on a 100-hour battery that uses carbon and oxygen to store renewable energy for days and could turn a little-known chemical system into an alternative to critical metal batteries to tackle prolonged blackouts.
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Fortescue announces a radical shift by replacing diesel with a system featuring 1.2 GW of solar energy, 600 MW of wind energy, and up to 5 GWh in batteries, a giant project that could save $100 million per year and transform heavy mining into one of the largest 100% renewable operations in the world by 2028.
Solar Energy Transformation
India currently uses about one billion tons of coal annually, making it the second-largest consumer in the world, behind China.
CIL is by far the largest producer in the country, with the company aiming to produce 710 million tons of coal in 2020-21, according to India’s coal ministry.
The country is a signatory to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and has committed to reducing its emissions by up to 35% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Last year, the country’s emissions fell for the first time in decades. Although the lower emissions are partly due to strict Covid-19 lockdown measures, the decreased demand for coal was also a factor.
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