(Note: Robert Bryce shared a byline on this story with Priyanka Bhardwaj)
With the rest of the world talking about carbon dioxide emissions and another Kyoto-style emission reductions plan, India continues to utilize the energy source that it has in abundance: coal.

India gets 51.4 percent of its primary energy from coal, making it the fourth-most coal dependent country in the world. And the primacy of coal will continue for decades to come as India has enough coal reserves to last for the next 100 years.

The result of all that coal use: India’s carbon emissions are rising faster than nearly every other country on the planet. Between 1980 and 2006, the country’s carbon output increased by 341 percent. That’s a greater rate of increase than that of China (312 percent), Brazil (103 percent), Indonesia (238 percent), or Pakistan (272 percent). By 2006, India was the third-largest carbon emitter in the world, with nearly 1,300 million tons of carbon dioxide, behind only the US (5,902 million tons) and China (6,017 million tons).

Given those numbers and India’s enormous population, two additional points are obvious: India’s carbon emissions are going to continue rising; and India will not be agreeing to any type of mandatory emission caps in the post-Kyoto Protocol world.

The key issue for India is electricity. The country desperately needs more electric power and coal is the cheapest and easiest way for the country to produce more electricity. About 69 percent of India’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants. The country has over 80 coal-fired power plants and more are on the way.

Coal is the most abundant hydrocarbon in India, with reserves of some 56.5 billion tons, about 6.7 percent of the world’s known reserves. And while the country wants to increase its use of renewables and nuclear, those sources will remain small players for the foreseeable future. By 2012, India hopes to have 10 percent of its power capacity comprised of renewable sources like hydro, wind, and solar. Those sources now account for about 8 percent of the country’s capacity. Nuclear continues to be a niche player, with a 2.5 percent share of the electricity market.

Between 1990 and 2007, electricity generation in India jumped by 172 percent, making it the 14th-fastest growing electricity market in the world over that time frame. Over that same time frame, India’s coal consumption grew by 124 percent. In 2007, the latest year for which accurate data is available, India’s coal use was the equivalent of about 4.1 million barrels of oil. That was a 6.6 percent increase over 2006 levels.

One factor could restrain India’s coal plans: politics. The richest coal mining regions are in the eastern and central states of Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhatisgarh and Bihar. And some of those regions have been affected by communist rebels known as Naxalites.

Nevertheless, the Indian government has said that it wants to make electricity available to all of its citizens by 2012. If it is to achieve that goal, and keep the electricity flowing, India will be burning lots of coal.

Original file available here: http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1736