Dastur Energy India (Dastur) has entered into an agreement with US-based Gas Technology Institute (GTI) to develop commercial-scale, low-carbon gasification solutions in India.

Dastur, a leading clean energy engineering firm with deep roots in the Indian market and extensive design and solution engineering expertise, will complement GTI’s unique experience with gasification of high ash coals and U-GASTM fluidised bed technology. Together, they will collaborate to lower costs and minimise environmental impacts with scalable gasification-based solutions for a range of Indian coals.

According to Atanu Mukherjee, President and CEO, Dastur, the Central Government has initiated several missions as part of India’s clean energy and energy security goals including budget outlays for coal gasification and new clean energy carriers like hydrogen and methanol.

The Prime Minister’s Coal Gasification Mission has a stated goal of gasifying 100 million tonnes of coal by 2030 with a potential investment budget of ₹4 lakh crore (about $50 billion).

“It is to be noted that emissions from thermal power or from electricity generation are only around 30 per cent of total emissions while 70 per cent comes from other sources. So we need to have a basket of technology and solutions to address the larger problem of CO2 emission. One of it is by using coal in a cleaner manner, by gasification of coal coupled with carbon capture system,” Mukherjee told BusinessLine.

Dastur and GTI intend to provide integrated solutions for the widest range of Indian coals with complete gasifier process design packages, technology licensing and gas conditioning know-how, comprehensive engineering for the gasifier and other plant components, implementation support, project management, operations training, plant start-up and commissioning.

India cannot phase out coal in the foreseeable future

While renewable energy is one area which would drive the clean energy basket of India, the country cannot move away from coal in the foreseeable future.

“Even in COP26, the term they have used instead of ‘phase out’ is ‘phase down’ coal. The reason for that is the largest endowment of energy that the country has is coal. It is the cheapest form of energy and for a developing country like India if you take coal out of the picture, there would be an economic collapse. So the question is how to use coal in a clean manner,” he pointed out.

Gasification projects are currently being driven by PSUs like Coal India. There are also talks of developing large coal based gasification plants based on allocation of coal blocks. According to him, it may make sense to do large scale allocation of coal blocks to drive adoption of gasification. There is also increasing incentives for technology demonstration and transfer and that is one area which has started shaping up.

‘Atma nirbhar’ clean energy future

India’s energy transition has significant opportunities to leverage its vast resource endowments to create an ‘atma nirbhar’ clean energy future.

“We believe that our gasification solutions based on GTI’s technology will be technologically superior, capable of scaling up to meet the nation’s needs, and be commercially attractive for gasifying India’s high ash coals,” he said.

Coal gasification, combined with carbon capture, use, and storage, is expected to be the basis for affordable clean fuels and feed stock substitution for producing clean steel, hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and other lower-carbon chemicals. The Coal Gasification Mission of India and the Ministry of Coal are currently shaping the direction of these important initiatives.

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