Coal Initiative Reports Positioning the Indian Coal-Power Sector for Carbon Mitigation: Key Policy Options

1 Executive Summary Coal-based generation appears likely to remain the linchpin of the Indian power sector at least for the next few decades, given the large domestic coal resources and the absence of any other significant domestic energy sources in the country. Coal power will, thus, help increase the availability of electricity, particularly in rural areas, which is an urgent development priority for the country. Given the enormous financial resources required to achieve this objective, the power sector has strong incentive to deploy cheaper, well-proven generation technologies. At the same time, climate change increasingly is recognized as an important issue for India, given the range and magnitude of the possible impacts. Even as India and other developing countries await stronger action by industrialized nations, policymakers have begun to explore ways to advance the country's development agenda while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recently, the Indian Prime Minister constituted a Council on Climate Change to " coordinate national action for assessment, adaptation and mitigation of climate change. " There is, however, widespread agreement within the country that its low per-capita emissions and development imperatives necessitate a deliberate approach to GHG mitigation. The major challenge facing India is how to reconcile rapid growth in the coal-power sector with the increasing urgency to address climate concerns. Appropriate actions and policies that offer climate co-benefits in the present could lay a foundation for an eventual, broader carbon mitigation strategy in the future, and help transition the coal-power sector to a cleaner and more sustainable path. With this in mind, we suggest several immediate steps that can help reduce carbon emissions from the Indian coal-power sector in the short term while offering significant development benefits: Improve efficiency of all elements in the existing power system: generation, transmission and • distribution, and end-use; Aggressively deploy higher-efficiency pulverized coal combustion technologies, such as supercritical • and ultra-supercritical technologies; Create a program for systematically assessing emerging technologies that may become important for • the medium-to long-term future of the coal power sector, and develop a strategic national plan for development, adaptation and deployment of suitable technologies; Establish and enforce emissions standards for sulfur oxides (SO • x) and nitrogen oxide (NO x), and provide incentives for installing pollution-control technologies, such that carbon capture from Indian power plants is economically feasible in the future, should the country decide to exercise that option; and Invest in a focused effort on …