India sets out to reduce coal production

At COP26, the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference held at the end of 2021, there were big announcements around phasing out coal power.

23 countries made new commitments today to phase out coal power, including five of the world’s top 20 coal power-using countries.

India was not one of those countries, but did announce partnerships with the Climate Investment Funds to accelerate their transition away from coal power.

Given India’s reliance on coal - 70% of their energy comes from it - our data scientist Sai Diwakar took a look at some of the publicly available data to see how India is tracking and what’s involved for them to reduce their reliance on coal power.

Hover over charts to see more detail:

The positive reduction in year on year growth is great but they still produce a huge amount of coal; 756 million tonnes in 2020, which makes them the second biggest producer in the world (approx. 10% of the world’s production).

As mentioned above, 5 states contribute almost 80% of the coal production for India, so a focus on these first will help to reduce production dramatically, especially since almost all are government owned.

However, reducing coal production requires India to replace the power with another source, which is costly and takes time. With a growing population of 1.38 billion, the need for round the clock electricity is at the forefront of its civilians minds, and governments are under pressure to meet demand.

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