Evidence on the future prospects of indian thermal power sector in the perspective of depleting coal reserve
Social Science Research Network(2012)
摘要
ABSTRACTIncreasing industrial growth throughout the world largely depends on availability of electricity. The overall situation in the power sector provides an optimistic view. However, insight into the thermal power industry provides a bleak picture. Thermal power stations mostly depend upon coal as a basic raw material. Economists project that India has a little over 250 billion metric tons of coal reserve to sustain continued and progressive demand for thermal power generation in the next 40-50 years. Indian thermal stations have started importing expensive coal from other countries to maintain generation and supply. Every thermal power station emits CO2. Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM), fly ash and effluents create health hazards and contribute to global warming. This paper develops a model based on Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) to depict the future prospects of coal based thermal power sector of India. The evidence shows that India needs to identify alternative sources of power generation to grow without damaging world and maintaining sustainability.JEL: E23; E27KEYWORDS: Insight; CO2; SPM; Fly ash; Global wanning; ARIMA Model; Sustainability(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTIONSince independence, India's population has grown from 300 million to more than one billion today. Increased population and changing lifestyle along with rapid economic growth has accelerated energy requirement of the country. Since 1990s, India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been increasing rapidly and is expected to increase at a similar pace for several decades. The rise in GDP implies an increase in expenditures on key energy sectors, namely electricity. Thermal power is the basic source of the country's energy production. In the beginning of 2010 the country produces 157,229 MW of electricity out of which 100,598 MW was generated from thermal plant. Coal is the basic primary fuel in thermal power plants, although there are other natural resources available like hydro-electricity, nuclear, solar and wind powered. These alternative sources of power are either highly technology oriented, capital intensive or demand highly skilled human capital. Moreover, commissioning a power plant based on these alternative sources of energy is time consuming.As an alternative to the critical demand for power, country planners have concentrated more on commissioning of thermal power plants. Coal happens to be the basic fuel of any thermal power plant and India had a plentiful supply of this basic raw material until recently. Unfortunately, the stock of coal in India is not unlimited. The share of coal in electricity generation declined from 98% in 1950-51 to 62.3% in 2009-10. Even then, it accounts for more than one-half of the electricity generation of the country. Coal mining in India commenced in the 18t century when much of the stock was exported to the UK due to limited requirement for thermal power in industries and in the domestic sector. The coal industry was in the hands of private entrepreneurs. In 1923, the India Government developed a regulatory framework and in 1972-73 nationalized the coal industry.Coal India Ltd (CIL) was incorporated as a holding company for seven coal-producing subsidiaries. Today CIL is engaged in mining coal from 495 working coal mines, accounting for nearly 88% of total coal production in the countiy. It is estimated that total coal reserve in India are 267 billion tons. At present, the Government of India has plans to add more than 50 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity during its 1 1th power plan. In the recent five-year plan period ending in March 2007, only about 12 of 20 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity were planned and completed.India is the third largest coal producing countiy. Unfortunately, Indian coal is of poor quality with high ash content and low caloric value i.e. gross heat of combustion. …
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co2,global warming,sustainability,arima model,spm,insight,fly ash
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