Coal India is eyeing solar wafer manufacturing with $1.73 billion in investments. No company manufacturers solar wafers in India currently
Coal India is looking at the probability of foraying into solar wafer manufacturing in India. The information was revealed by Coal India’s chairman Pramod Agarwal in an interaction with Reuters. Coal India is known as the largest coal mining agency in the world.
The agency, as per Agarwal, is calculating the possibility of aggressively participating in solar auctions taking place in India. Coal India, which is already into a joint venture with state-run NLC, has investment plans encompassing $1.73 billion (Rs 125 billion). This investment is solely targeted towards the solar industry in India.
The agency also plans to start closing small mines at the same time. It is to be noted here that the company has already closed 82 mines during the last three years. The same has resulted in cutting Coal India’s workforce by about 18,600 employees.
Agarwal was quoted by Reuters saying, “Coal as you know, we’re going to lose business in the next two, three decades. Solar will take over (from) coal slowly as a major energy provider in the coming years.”
Coal-based power generation had accounted for 78.6 per cent of the country’s total generation on 22 January 2021 when all-India peak power demand, which is the highest supply in a day, surged to a new record of 187.3 GW in the morning eclipsing the previous high of 185.82 GW recorded on 20 January 2021.
“This increase in coal-based power generation bodes well for us. If this continues, we could expect our supplies to the power sector go up in the near future” a senior executive of Coal India had said on January 2021, adding “Power plants need to submit adequate program at our coal companies to avoid any shortage of coal as the demand started peaking”.
No company manufactures solar wafers in India
The news of Coal India calculating the probability of investing in the solar wafer manufacturing sector has broken at a time when the government authorities are envisaging to levy 40 per cent customs duty on solar modules and 25 per cent on solar cells from April 2022. It is worth mentioning here that no company manufactures solar wafers in India currently.
Solar wafers, usually made using silicon, are in great demand all over the world as governments are looking to switch to renewable ways of producing electricity. India has also set a target of reaching 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030. These figures are part of India’s commitment under the Paris Climate Agreement i.e., to own 40 per cent of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2030.
The total value of solar photovoltaic cells or solar cells imports by India, whether or not assembled in module or panel, stood at $1,525.8 million for the April-December period of FY20. Renewable energy minister R K Singh had highlighted these figures in a session at the Parliament of India. In FY17, FY18, and FY19, India’s solar imports from China stood at $2,817.34 million, $3,418.96 million, and $1,694.04 million, respectively. Chinese firms have been supplying about 80 per cent of solar cells and modules imported by India.
Coal India foraying into manufacturing solar wafers might help solar companies in India in procuring economical components for manufacturing solar panels. As Mr Agarwal said in the interaction, “We are just exploring the possibilities where we can invest in solar wafer production, nobody is (currently) there in the country.”
Will this also help in establishing India’s first big semiconductor fab? Only time will tell!
