Weaning India Off Its Coal Dependency: Nuclear Energy Just Might Be the Solution

During the last few years, India is aggressively making efforts to increase renewable energy production, with an investment of more than $42 billion. The efforts have surely shown results as India has crossed 100 GW power generation capacity through green sources. An additional 50 GW is under installation and 27 GW is under tendering. Notwithstanding this encouraging trend, the role and share of coal in India’s power generation capacity continues to be substantial and even growing, negating the renewable push and hindering the efforts towards achieving the ‘zero emission goal’. According to the Ministry of Coal, India’s total coal production increased by 6.74 % to 74.78 million tonnes (MT) during December 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019; also, coal-based power generation registered a growth of 11.84 % in the month of December 2021. This indicates India’s crippling dependence on coal and the necessity for serious introspection.

With the increasing demand for energy from industrial and commercial sectors, and pressure of meeting climate change obligations, India is making big push towards green energy. While this push is vital in making the country’s energy-mix sustainable, the challenge of weaning India off its coal dependency remains a strong impediment. More than 70 per cent of India’s power production is sourced from coal, which is quickly depleting. In this carbon-constraint world, it has become vital to shift to sustainable energy resource that can keep up with rising needs while reducing CO2 emissions. Given the seriousness of the challenge, India urgently needs to garner the most viable alternative source of energy available to reduce dependency on coal, i.e., nuclear energy. 

Contrary to common perception, nuclear energy is one of the most sustainable forms of energy owing to its baseload potential and environment friendliness, compared to other energy sources. On a life-cycle basis, nuclear power emits approximately 12g CO2 equivalent/kWh, which is significantly lower as compared to coal, which emits 950g CO2 equivalent/kWh. Unlike solar and wind energy, nuclear energy is available round the clock regardless of the weather conditions. 

Furthermore, nuclear energy is advantageous when compared with other renewables like wind or solar which are intermittent in nature and cannot meet heavy industries’ energy demand. With the advancement in nuclear power technology, remote regions cut-off from grid, in a short time span, can host a cost-effective small modular reactor (SMR) such as the ones developed by Russian state nuclear energy company, Rosatom.

Comparatively, nuclear plants are more economical and financially feasible to implement vis-a-vis other traditional sources of power projects. Because of the optimized processes, the cost of energy production, which includes the cost of maintenance, production, and waste disposal, is significantly lower than fossil fuel-based energy sources of scale. While the investment cost of nuclear energy might be higher than coal power plants, the maintenance costs are substantially lower over the long term. In addition, nuclear energy is not subject to market fluctuations, unlike all other sources. The latest tariff rate for nuclear energy produced by NPCIL operating nuclear plants ranges from Rs. 2.41 to 4.09 per kWh (average Rs. 3.47 per unit) which is comparable with Thermal power (Rs.3.25/kWhr), but lesser than Solar power that costs Rs. 4.04–Rs. 4.30k/kWhr.

While renewable energy push will certainly help in reducing emissions and meet the short-term targets, for India to achieve the zero-emission goal without compromising the production capacity, nuclear might just be the best bet against coal. India, therefore, stands at a historic moment to make an epoch changing decision.