Assessing possibilities for coal continuance in India under climate constraints

Rapid shift from traditional energy intensive pathways is required to pace-up economic growth before exhausting remaining carbon budget under 2 °C global stabilization target. Within this larger context, in this paper we have used AIM/End-use, a bottom-up, techno-economic model to analyze India's energy security and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the year 2000 to 2050 with a focus on possibilities of coal continuance in India. Our analysis shows that by adopting advanced coal technologies and carbon dioxide capture and sequestration (CCS) options, up to 45% CO₂ emission reduction can be achieved over business-as-usual scenario (BAU) by 2050. This is possible even when coal use would increase to nearly 2200 Mt in 2050 as against 870 Mt in 2017-18. Without CCS, coal use could peak at 1200 Mt with 22% CO₂ reduction over BAU in 2050 but in that case nuclear and renewable energy would become pivotal in meeting energy demand. The paper concludes that a win-win integration of energy security and deep GHG emission mitigation is possible through a large-scale integration of advanced coal technologies and CCS in Indian energy systems. We have also provided a brief PESTLE analysis for finding the enabling environment necessary for achieving the results discussed in various scenarios.