Coal India Limited (CIL) plans to invest Rs 26,550 crore for diversification and environmental hazard mitigation with an aim of achieving greater sustainability in operations. The mining major will seek diversification by creating a solar portfolio, setting up coal to liquid projects and surface coal gasification projects. To reduce environmental pollution, the firm plans to mechanize transportation and increase the number of washeries.
To take care of environment and social governance, CIL has appointed a consultant for better understanding of the needful to manage risks of its operations on environment
and people with the consultant helping out in assessing the company’s success beyond its finances. Aiming to reduce energy use, mining waste and pollution, CIL aims at wider conservation of natural resources, especially land and forests as it has already planted 100 million trees since inception on 39,840 hectare.
Promoting mechanized coal transportation at a cost of Rs 12,500 crore, the company would move 406 million tonnes of coal a year through piped conveyor belts from 35 mining projects by FY24, helping it to reduce dust pollution, said a CIL official. The National Environmental Engineering Institute (Neeri) would assess and quantify the benefits of these projects to the environment.
The mining operations of CIL will be powered by 3,000 mw of solar portfolio for which the company will invest Rs 5,650 crore to install 14 rooftop and ground mounted solar power projects. It has floated a tender to set up a coal to liquid (methanol) plant at in investment of Rs 6,000 crore in tandem with the government’s methanol economy programme for reducing oil imports.
The plant would come up at the Dankuni Coal Complex in West Bengal with CIL leasing out land for the project’s life assessed to be 25-30 years. The plant would come up on build-own-operate model and produce 6.76 lakh tonne of methanol a year. This would be used for blending with petrol to up to 15 per cent for marketing in West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar.
