Govt emphasises on indigenous coal production

The Dollar Business Bureau

The government plans to replace about 15 million tones of imported coal with indigenous coal in the next six months, and it urged the industry to come up with new ideas for finding a sustainable solution for this challenge.

India continues to import coal from other countries despite a surplus of coal in the country because the country’s power plants have been designed not to function on indigenous coal.

Referring to the power decentralization initiatives provided by the government, Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said the government is focusing on distributing energy production to consumers so that they could start generating power.

“In fact, the rooftop solar power programme will be expanded to 300 MW today to the 40000 MW in the next six years. It will not only provide energy security but will also give support to the thousands of people living in areas inaccessible to grid based power supply,” he said.

Highlighting the problem of climate change, the minister reiterated that the world strives towards sustainable lifestyle. “We are very concerned to see how the developed world is going to respond to this challenge in terms of demand side management of their consumption.”