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Comment by sfifs | Hacker News Reader

Australian coal is currently largely used for steel making in India as "coking coal" as far as I know. Power generation is largely local coal. A few power plants that depend on imported coal have been proposed but hardly any have come through as the political process of acquiring coal has been undependable.

Source: Metallurgical engineering background

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That's not true. As anyone in the power industry will tell you, Indian coal, tho voluminous in availability, has a relatively very low calorific content and relatively much higher Ash content. As a result, disposal of ash is far more expensive than project economics can sustain. As a result, imported coal IS the standard, domestic coal may be used as a supplement, and long term supply contracts from local traders who import from sites in Indonesia, et al. is commonplace.

Also, you're absolutely wrong about imported coal plants being rare. I don't know of any critical or super critical plants that could use 100% domestic coal without having to blatantly lie on their EIA study about ash disposal. It's just not viable.

Don't know what your sources are but see this article based on coal ministry data which suggest coal imports are a small fraction of India consumption and rapidly coming down. Specifically to your point - "Goyal added that no power producer has approached CIL for supply of imported coal this year."

https://www.platts.com/latest-news/coal/newdelhi/indias-coal...

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