India Cancels 16 GW Proposed Power Project Plans

To control rising coal imports and carbon emission in India, the government has decided to cancel 4 coal based power project plans.

The Indian Ministry has issued a cancellation order on proposed 4 coal based power projects in the wake of community confrontation to compulsory land procurement, along with relocation and electricity power surpluses. These all 4 projects were planned to set up earlier at 4 different states namely Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

While, all 4 plants with 16 GW capacity were required about 46 MnT coal per year to fired properly and two of them planned to completely depend on imported coal; about 23 MnT per year.

Moreover, the projects had been running under planning, preparation, and land-acquisition stages since last 8 years. However, the government is still planning for 3 new UMMP with 12 GW capacity in different states viz Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Bihar by 2020.

In Apr’16, the Power Ministry had announced to scale back its projected thermal power capacity from 289 GW to 239 GW, reduction of 50 GW by 2022. At present, India has about 211 GW thermal power capacity.

Also, the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) purposes to add new capacity in FY17, including 16,660 MW for the clean power sector, 12GW targets for the solar industry, 4 GW for the wind industry, 400 MW for biomass, 250 MW for small scale hydro-electricity and 10 MW for waste-to-power.