At a United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, 4 years ago, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi made an ambitious pledge. In the presence of over 120 other global leaders, he set 2070 as India’s target year for net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases.
For India, the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, meeting that goal will require moving away from coal, the country’s primary source of energy, and embracing renewable and other low-carbon resources. Along those lines, the government has made significant strides in building its renewable energy capacity over the past decade. Several ambitious investments in the fields of solar energy and green hydrogen have recently made headlines.
But as the country’s energy demand grows, renewable energy adoption hasn’t been accompanied by a decrease in reliance on coal, a fossil fuel that generates more CO2 per unit of energy produced than other nonrenewable sources, such as natural gas and oil.
In fact, India’s coal use is on the rise and not just for power generation. The government is investing in and incentivizing industrial projects based on coal gasification, in which coal is oxidized in the presence of steam at high temperatures. The process creates synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
The concoction, also known as syngas, serves as a raw material for basic chemicals such as methanol and ammonia. Syngas can also be used to produce olefins and other petrochemicals, though this approach is practiced mainly in China and South Africa. The Indian government is bullish on syngas technology, and officials have set a goal of gasifying 100 million metric tons (t) of coal, about 10% of the country’s annual coal consumption, by 2030.
Gasifying coal to make chemicals is not much better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal—and much worse than making those chemicals from oil or natural gas. India relies heavily on oil, natural gas, and methanol imports, which not only are expensive but also contradict Modi’s vision of making the country self-sufficient. Although many policy experts defend India’s coal consumption as an economic right to utilize a domestic resource, it’s clear that the country, at least for now, is not moving in the direction of carbon neutrality.