About

Preamble

​ Today, Indian Coal Industry is passing through critical times. On the one hand Coal has been declared as the prime culprit responsible for producing Green House gases leading to Global Warming and on the other dependence of India on Coal is increasing as the Primary Energy Source and the Fuel for more than 75% of Power Generation. The contradiction becomes more glaring when viewed against the background of India's commitment at Paris Conference to cut down the energy intensity per unit of GDP by 30-35% over the 2005 level. The other side of the picture is that the country is endowed with huge Coal resources - of the order of 325 billion tons, 60% of which is available within open castable depths. The Indian Coal Industry should therefore have been able to meet the required growth in Coal production for keeping pace with its ever-increasing requirement. Unfortunately however for more than two decades now the country has become dependent on Imports for meeting this requirement. While Import of Metallurgical Coal is understandable since the country's resource of this type of Coal is rather limited and the quality of even this limited resource is poor, Import dependence for power grade coal should be totally unacceptable. The country has a very vibrant Coal Industry, it has well qualified technical manpower, Geology of the coal deposits is rather simple and yet the imports are going north all the time. Obviously, the most important challenge is to augment Coal production and to achieve this task fast so that import dependence at least for power grade coal can be eliminated. Other major challenges are:

• ​Improving the safety status in Indian Coal Mines
• Greening of coal production and utilisation so that Paris commitment can be honoured.
• Establishing Indian Coal Industry as a positive contributor towards growth in Forest Cover in the Country.
• Clearing the name of the Coal Industry as a destroyer of productive land resource
• R&D efforts towards generating Metallurgical Coal from Non-coking Coal.
• Exploitation of CBM resources in the Indian Coal Deposits.

INDIAN COAL FORUM (ICF) has decided to contribute to this National effort towards making the country self-sufficient in power grade coal by organising a National Seminar to identify and address the reasons which are standing in the way of the Indian Coal Industry delivering on the task assigned to it by the Nation.