India Bets On Carbon Capture to Keep Its Coal Sector Viable

(Bloomberg) -- India is set to launch a carbon capture policy that it says will allow it to keep exploiting its vast coal resources and deal with its growing emissions, according to to a top government energy adviser.

The policy is expected to be unveiled later this year – should Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government retain power in upcoming elections — and will include incentives for companies to trap, recycle and where possible store their emissions underground, said Rajnath Ram, energy adviser at Niti Aayog, the policymaking branch of the Indian government.

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“The power sector generates 42% of India’s total emissions,” Ram said in an interview. “We estimate that 70% of that can be captured and recycled through carbon capture.”

To match increasingly steep demand peaks and avoid blackouts, aggressive renewable deployment is not enough, Ram said. “In the absence of storage, you need to add at least the same amount of thermal capacity. We have abundant coal and we want to use it, in a sustainable way.”

Most climate scenarios deem some amount of carbon removal essential to curb climate change, yet the technologies are still in their infancy, and most project have proved unviable due to high cost and low efficiency. 

Around 40 Carbon Capture and Storage units are currently online globally, and 50 more are expected to enter operation by 2030, a pace far too slow to reach carbon neutrality by mid century, according to the International Energy Agency. 

India is already exploring coal gasification, for which it is setting aside 85 billion rupees ($1 billion) in subsidies to help get projects off the ground. The early-stage technology, which turns coal into gas to generate electricity, results in marginally lower emissions compared to conventional coal firing. 

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