Coal in India

have increased rapidly over the past five years, India’s capacity to continueto import large volumes of coal has also been affected by infrastructurelimitations. During 2014, imports were affected by port congestion,particularly on the east coast; a shortage of rail wagons forced somecompanies to transport coal by road, which costs 30–40 per cent more; andinadequate logistics to move coal from port to utilities.The transportation infrastructure challenge, particularly rail, is likely to beexacerbated as India’s coal consumption grows. Growth in imports intocoastal locations may relieve some of this burden. However, the demand forrail freight can only increase sharply as other modes of coal transportationhave little potential for expansion.Box 3: Coal transportationOnce extracted, coal must be transported to its final end-user. For power plantslocated within close proximity to the mine or inaccessible by road, coal can betransported by conveyor belt, which reduces transportation costs. Conveyorbelts generally transport coal between 8 and 24 kilometres. They are relativelylow maintenance, but can be energy intensive and once built have limited locationflexibility.For power plants located further away from the mine, but still in relatively closeproximity, coal can be transported by road in trucks. These trucks can have acapacity of up to 200 tonnes in some countries, but the capacity is typically lowerin India. Where road is accessible, trucks provide the most versatile transportationoption. However, loading and unloading can release large volumes of dustparticles. In addition, truck loads are usually uncovered so there can be someproduct loss during transportation.Rail is the most common form of coal transportation for long distances betweenmine and power plant or port. A typical train will have 100 to 120 carriages, witheach carriage holding between 100 and 110 tonnes. The carriages generally canbe emptied by turning them upside down, which reduces unloading times. Rail istypically more energy efficient than other systems, but is higher cost.A merry-go-round is a dedicated shuttle train that operates between the mine andthe power plant. The train can reverse direction without stopping, which allows it toload and unload its cargo while it is still moving and improve its efficiency.Where coal mines are close to waterways, coal barges can be used to transportcoal to end users. Typically a towboat will tow fifteen to forty barges; a jumbo bargecan carry around 1200 tonnes. Barges can provide economies of scale and aretypically cheaper than rail. However, they are restricted to waterways which cancause slower delivery.Ships are most commonly used for international transportation. The most commonship sizes are: Handy Size (40 000 to 45 000 deadweight tonnes, DWT); Panamax(60 000 to 80 000 DWT), which is technically the maximum size for a vessel topass through the Panama Canal (pre-expansion); and Capesize (more than 80000 DWT), which is a vessel that is too large to go through the Panama Canal andneeds to sail via the Cape of Good Hope from the Pacific to the Atlantic (Speight2013).50COAL IN INDIA 2015