By Manish Gupta
Coal minister Pralhad Joshi on Tuesday said the country needs to move away from open-cast to more environment-friendly underground (UG) mining, as he unveiled a vision plan for state-run Coal India (CIL) to quadruple production from UG mines to 100 million tonne (MT) by FY28.
“We want to increase the share of UG mining of coal to build an Atmanirbhar Bharat with a sustainable mining sector. By 2030, we want to take the share of UG mined coal to 10% (from the current level of 4%). Coal India has prepared a road map,” he said at an event organsied by the PSU.
Joshi said discussions will take place among key stakeholders for executing the plan and identifying changes that would be required in rules, particularly when UG mining will be taken up for commercial coal mining.
“Scaling up production from India’s UG coal mines will help in reducing coal imports, thereby helping save foreign exchange. To achieve this vision, coal companies need to deploy the latest mining technologies,” he said.
In FY23, of CIL’s 703 MT of coal production, open-cast output accounted for around 96% and only 25 MT, or less than 4%, coal came from UG mines. In the first decade since coal sector nationalisation in 1975, coal from UG mines outsripped the open pit output, but the scales have tilted since 1984-85.
Of the 3.7 billion tonne of coal produced by China, UG mines accounted for more than 90%. About 37% of coal in USA and 50% in South Africa is produced from underground mines. Europe has stopped open-cast mining and has relied mostly on underground production. Almost 50% of the world coal comes from UG mines.
UG mining is not only environment friendly, but also minimally land invasive. With UG mining, significantly less displacement happens and it yields superior quality of coal, which is generally imported by India. It can aid import substitution.
In FY23, India imported 235 MT of coal. Though the share of imports have gone down from 24% in FY20 to 21% in FY23, money spent on imports went up to Rs 3.83 trillion.
The CIL vision document has outlined a subsidiary wise production plan, indicating the projects to be taken up and the various timelines.
“Coal sector is facing severe challenges in recent years due to increasing concerns on the environmental and social issues. Hence, it is the need of the hour that mining activities and practices are modulated in such a way that they become more sustainable,” coal secretary Amrit Lal Meena said.
As per the road map, CIL expects coal from UG mines to be around 31 MT to 34 MT in FY24, and 99 MT to 100 MT in FY28.
“As UG mining is minimally land invasive and has little impact on farming and forest, the environment related rules for open-cast may not be relevant for UG mining,” CIL chairman Pramod Agarwal said, adding that shift to UG mining will be important for the sustainability of the state-run mining company.