The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy R K Singh met with his counterparts in states and union territories and shared his views on the steps that are being taken to address the growing power demand in the country, which he said is a sign of the fast growth of the Indian economy. Addressing the opening session of the National Conference of Power and New & Renewable Energy Ministers of States & UTs, being held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi during November 6 ? 7, 2023, the Minister said that India would not have become the fastest growing large economy of the world if we had not brought about a transformation in power sector. ?Economic growth is dependent on the power sector. Power sector is a fundamental driving force in the progress of the nation.?

?No compromise on power needed for growth, even if it means addition of coal-based capacity.? Speaking about the challenges, the Minister said that while the forthcoming COP-28 meeting is expected to focus on reducing coal usage, India is not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth. ?COP-28 is going to be held in UAE. There is going to be pressure on nations at COP to reduce usage of coal. We are not going to do this, since our point of view is clear, that we are not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth, even if it requires that we add coal-based capacity. At the same time, we need to and we will achieve the targets we had set for ourselves at COP.?

The Power Minister pointed out that the second challenge is that of meeting the fast-growing power demand but the government is committed to address it by adding enough capacity to meet the demand. ?The demand increased by 20% more than last year, in August, September and in October 2023. This shows how fast our economy is growing. Also, we met peak demand of 2.41 lakh MW recently while peak demand was 1.9 lakh MW in 2017-18. If the peak demand grows even higher, we may not be able to meet it. This is one challenge we need to address.?

Singh said that one way the government has thought of addressing the challenge of growing demand is that all power plants need to be run and at full capacity. ?We observe that some states do not run their power plants at peak capacity and instead seek power from the Centre?s pool. If some state is not running their plants at peak demand, we will not be able to supplement from the central pool. We have to focus on making sure that all our plants run and all our plants run at full capacity.?

Besides this, we need to add capacity as well, said the Minister. ?Earlier, around 25,000 MW was under construction, mostly in the public sector. But this was not sufficient; so, we started work on adding 25,000 MW, but we need to start work on additional 30,000 MW. I.e., we need about 80,000 MW of thermal capacity under construction. All this capacity addition is being done through the public sector, private sector investment has not started coming, but I am quite certain that private sector investments will come, as we have made the system viable and the sector gives returns.?

The gap between domestic coal consumption and domestic coal arrival is another challenge, informed the Minister. ?I am certain that Coal India must have increased production, but our demand has increased faster. This has led to shortages and that?s why we need to do 6% blending. NTPC and DVC are doing the blending; states too should do the blending, depending on shortage of coal.?

The Minister stressed that available coal will have to be distributed equitably among states, depending on the requirements. ?We don?t play politics in electricity. It is a fully integrated system; power is generated in some state and consumed in 3-4 different states. Coal is produced somewhere, wind somewhere and solar somewhere else. We are not going to do any favouritism. The shortage will have to be shared by all and supplemented by all.?

The Minister urged the States to set up new power plants near coal belts so that issues related to long-distance transportation of coal and availability of rakes do not arise.