States will be told to offer coal blocks for competitive bidding

New Delhi: India’s Central Electricity Authority has asked for a meeting of all states on 19 January to urge them to utilize alloted coal blocks by offering them for competitive bidding for power generation.
The country’s top power sector planning agency is worried that a failure to move quickly could jeopardize several proposed coal-based power projects.
“We are making this plan for the 12th Plan period (2012-17) as the coal ministry has made it pretty clear that it will not give any fresh linkages,” said a senior official at the authority, who didn’t want to be named. “We do not want the resources to be wasted.”
Captive coal blocks for power generation are given out by the coal ministry.
States with a large number of captive coal blocks include Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.
The states, together with private sector companies, have been allocated captive coal blocks with at least 6 billion tonnes, or bt, of reserves, which have a potential to generate 100,000MW of electricity.
India has an installed power generation capacity of 145,000MW and plans to add 78,577MW by 2012. Of this, around 46,600MW is expected to come from coal-fired plants.
The coal ministry has rationed out access to coal blocks, implying that some power plants planning to start operations by 2012 will not have assured supplies and might have to import coal.
To make matters worse, of 187 captive coal blocks allocated to private firms for mining that have estimated reserves of 41bt, only 20 have started production.
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