New Delhi: The government will organise a Quality Conference with coal companies to ensure the right quality of the fossil fuel is supplied to power plants, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said.
"On April 5, the Ministry is holding a Quality Conference with all the coal companies and technical experts of the sector to sit down and lay down the strategy to ensure that right quality of coal is supplied to our power plants and help them achieve higher efficiency rates," Goyal said at an event.
He also said the Cabinet recently approved a more liberalised pricing policy on coal-bed methane development and production, which will ensure more efficient usage of coal with evolution of technology.
This will define the manner in which India uses its coal in the future, he said. The minister noted that there is no problem in the sector to which a solution cannot be found.
"A problem is a problem till its solution is found out. The power sector needs a lot of innovation and improvement to make India power self-reliant in the future," he said.
Goyal discussed three key areas which have shown tremendous transformation in the last three years -- coal sector, solar power and the UDAY scheme.
He said the country has seen a huge ramp up in production of domestic coal in the last three years, to the tune of more than 100 MT. However, he added that this year the quantity of coal produced has been less compared to the previous two years.
The minister stated that though the country has the ability to produce more coal, it is held back by market forces. This means that for several years to come, India will have sufficient coal and imports would not ramp up as it did three years ago, he added.
Goyal said the country has abundant coal reserves and domestic production capacity, yet power plants are dependent on imported coal.
This is because a major portion of our thermal power plants cannot use more than 30 per cent of domestic coal, he added.
Goyal said the government is tirelessly working to increase the ratio of domestic coal being used in our power plants by improving technology.
