No plan to phase out old coal-fired power plants: Power Minister RK Singh

The NEP suggests that India may need even more than 51 GW of coal-fired electricity in case commissioning of renewable energy projects and battery energy storage systems are delayed.

The Union government on August 10 said it has no plan to phase out old coal-fired power plants in the country.

"The government has not formulated any plan to phase out old coal-based thermal power plants in the country. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) vide an advisory dated January 20, 2023 suggested that no retirement or re-purposing of coal-based power stations will be done before 2030, considering the expected energy demand scenario and availability of capacity in future," RK Singh, Union minister for power and new and renewable energy informed the Rajya Sabha.

The minister further said the CEA has advised thermal power generating companies to implement renovation and modernisation (R&M) and life extension (LE) of their thermal power units for running up to 2030 and beyond or operating in two shift mode to facilitate solar and wind energy integration into the grid, wherever feasible.

On May 8, Moneycontrol was the first to report about the government's plan to upgrade existing thermal power plants and that majority of the capacity expansion in the thermal capacity is going to be through brownfield projects.

Generation is a delicensed activity as per Section 7 of the Electricity Act, 2003 and phasing out or retirement of units is decided by power generating companies based on their own techno-economic and environmental reasons.

Singh further informed that in order to achieve higher efficiencies and to reduce carbon footprint, a large number of thermal power plants operating in the country have already adopted super-critical or ultra super-critical technologies.

As on date, 94 coal-based thermal units of total capacity of 65,150 MW are operating with super-critical or ultra super-critical technologies.

The minister stated that the total power generated in the country grew by at least 8 percent year-on-year in 2021-22, and by 9 percent in 2022-23. Singh further said that electricity generated by coal-based power plants grows by 10 percent between 2021-22 and 2022-23.

As per the National Electricity Plan (NEP), India would need about 51,060 megawatt (MW) or 51 gigawatt (GW) of coal-fired power capacity addition to meet the country's burgeoning power requirement, which is expected to touch 2,473.8 billion units by 2031-32 with the peak power demand likely to hit 366.4 gigawatt (GW).