The government is looking at introducing ‘clean’ technologies in coal mining.  Underground coal gasification, coal to liquid and other technologies are being promoted under the aegis of the union coal ministry. These efforts to ensure consistency in quality of coal supplies have led to a spurt in washed coal production for power generation, coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said at the Coal Asia summit here on Tuesday.

Jaiswal further said that ministry is aware of the role of energy in India’s development and that coal is the mainstay of India’s energy requirements. The dependence of power projects on coal is likely to increase in the future, the minister added, noting that supplying quality coal for the energy sector at affordable prices is a big challenge for the country.

He highlighted the gap between demand and domestic supply of coal saying that it has increased from 50 million tonnes in 2007-08 to around 83 million tonnes in 2010-11. The gap for the current year is envisaged to be around 142 million tonnes. After taking into account the additional coal stock liquidation from Coal India Limited for supply to the power sector, the gap may come down to 114 million tones. The projected coal demand in the terminal year 2016-17 of the twelfth five year plan is about 980 million tonnes and the envisaged production is 795 million tonnes leaving a gap of 185 million tonnes.