New Delhi: India's coal challenge has shifted from producing coal to moving it, cleaning it and finding new uses for it, speakers said at the 18th India Coal Summit in New Delhi on Thursday. The summit was organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and brought together policy experts, power and steel producers and the Geological Survey of India (GSI).
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According to the Ministry of Coal, India produced 1,039 million tonnes (MT) of coal in FY26. That was the second consecutive year above one billion tonnes. Further gains would depend on logistics, coal quality, coking coal and new technologies such as gasification, speakers said.
Amit Prakash, Head of Regulatory Affairs, Mining and Steel, at Tata Steel, said movement was now the problem. "The challenge ahead is not producing more coal, it is moving it," he said. "Most of our coal is mined in the east while consumers are spread across the country, and the rail lines are already stretched."
He pointed to Australia as an example. "Australia's Hunter Valley moves about 90 percent of its coal by rail, with train loading in under two hours. If India is to move 1.5 billion tonnes, we need rapid loading systems, higher axle loads and a 21-day coal stock at consuming plants to avoid recurring shortages," Prakash said.
According to Prakash, Indian rakes typically carried 55 to 58 wagons, while heavy-haul trains in the US carried more than 130. Axle loads in India ranged around 22 to 25 tonnes, he said, against 30 to 35 tonnes in Australia. So that ash was not transported across the country, he proposed washing coal at pitheads. He also called for better use of waterways and a joint master plan across the Ministries of Coal, Railways, Power and Steel. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) could be used to cut idling across the supply chain, he said.
The quality of India's coal adds to that freight burden, according to Manish Singla, Head of Mineral Auction at Jindal Steel. "Only about 28 percent of India's coal output today is G10 or better, so every additional tonne carries more ash that has to be moved across the country," he said.
Improving that share would need more coal from underground mines, which cost more to run. "Raising that share to around 50 percent by 2047 needs a real push to underground mining, which today contributes only 3 to 4 percent of production. Underground coal costs around Rs 2,200 to Rs 2,500 a tonne against about Rs 500 for opencast, so the policy support has to go further," Singla said.
Singla noted that the Ministry of Coal had eased performance security, upfront payment and revenue share terms for underground mines. The ministry had also simplified capacity expansion at existing mines to limit fresh land acquisition, he said. According to Singla, Jindal Steel operated five coal blocks. It had also carried out initial studies and experiments on underground coal gasification as the country worked towards its target of gasifying 100 MT of coal by 2030.
For Dr Pankaj Kumar Satija, Chairperson of the ICC National Expert Committee on Minerals and Metals, the steel sector's coking coal needs were the next test. He began with the role coal has played so far. "Coal has helped insulate India from oil shocks since the 1970s, and it is doing so again today. We have crossed one billion tonnes for two consecutive years, and commercial and captive mines alone produced 210 million tonnes last year," Satija said.
Steelmaking was where that record ran out, he said. "The next challenge is coking coal. Our blast furnaces produced 96 million tonnes of hot metal in FY26, which needed 75 million tonnes of coking coal, and around 66 million tonnes of that was imported," Satija said. "With the draft National Steel Policy envisaging 600 million tonnes of steel capacity and coking coal demand of about 214 million tonnes by 2047, we should start treating metallurgical coal as one category."
Some of that demand could be met from domestic coal, according to Satija. Around 40 MT of non-coking coal of grade G6 and above was suited for pulverised coal injection (PCI) in steelmaking, he said. Two mines had already had non-coking coal reclassified as coking coal based on its coking properties. Satija also said the skill councils for the mining sector, green jobs and electronics should work together. That would help workers who depended directly or indirectly on coal to find suitable jobs as the transition progressed, he said.
Somes Bandyopadhyay, Chief Executive Officer of NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN) and a former managing director of Gujarat State Electricity Corporation Limited (GSECL), said coal would remain in India's energy mix for decades. "Whatever renewable capacity we add, coal will have to stay with us for a few more decades. But even our economically mineable reserves are finite, and large-scale gasification will draw them down faster," he said.
New mines were not coming up fast enough to tap those reserves, Bandyopadhyay said. "Policies are being announced, but on the ground, land acquisition, rehabilitation and clearances are keeping commercial mines from coming up. Single window clearance and ease of doing business have to move from paper to practice," he said.
He also pointed to a mismatch in the power system. Power was being curtailed during solar hours while evening peaks faced shortages, he said. Weak hydro and wind generation had made this worse this year. According to Bandyopadhyay, fuel supply agreements with coal suppliers remained one-sided on quality and quantity. Power producers also faced penalties on fly ash utilisation, he said, while clearances for filling mine voids with ash moved slowly through multiple agencies. Much of the evacuation infrastructure at older mines was in poor condition, he said, and he called for conveyor-based silo loading at mines.
Dr Frincy RM, Director (G) at the GSI, said coal could serve purposes other than fuel. "Coal does not have to be only a fuel. Coal seams can store carbon dioxide while releasing the coal bed methane trapped in them, and deep lignite that cannot be mined economically can be gasified underground," she said.
She cited work with the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-CIMFR). "Fly ash concentrates rare earth elements to five to seven times their level in coal. A pilot with CSIR-CIMFR has produced oil from Indian coal comparable with petroleum," Frincy said. Taking that work further would need money for research and development (R&D), she said. "What we need now is sustained investment in R&D, which is what has taken China ahead."
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According to Frincy, GSI's shale gas exploration in the Jharia, Raniganj and South Karanpura coalfields had established around 75,000 million cubic metres of gas in place. GSI had also proposed a standard procedure requiring rare earth analysis of at least one borehole in coal exploration, she said. Coal could also be converted into hard carbon for sodium-based batteries, she said, which would reduce dependence on lithium.