Doing our best to meet coal production target with minimum carbon footprint: CIL Chairman

Yes I know it is a lofty target but we hope to achieve it during the current fiscal. I believe that a target should be challenging enough that you push yourself hard to achieve it, but not so difficult that you know it is unachievable and give up even without trying. So we have fixed our target just stiff enough. We have drawn up a month-wise plan and we have been able to achieve nearly 95-96 per cent of our target so far. In the first quarter of this financial year we are likely to achieve 35 mt excess production as compared to the same period last year.

Most emissions take place when the coal is burnt. We are not burning coal, we only produce and transport the coal. So we can introduce methods to bring down emissions caused while producing and transporting it, and we are already undertaking several such measures. Infact, transportation of coal causes more pollution and we are taking initiatives through our first mile connectivity projects to bring that down.

For environmentally cleaner, faster and fully automated coal loading, CIL is setting up coal handling plants and silosby FY25, in 35 projects to load an additional 415 mt through first mile connectivity (FMC). We are already loading around 151 mt of coal in such manner. Of the 35 FMC projects, six of 82 mt per annum capacity have been commissioned so far. This will help bring down the carbon footprint during transportation of coal.

Surface miners in opencast mines entail blast-free extraction of coal and are hence environment friendly, as they reduce noise and dust pollution. Also, they lead to better quality coal output with consistent-sized coal. For FY22, CIL’s output through surface miners was 312.3 mt, which is roughly around 52 per cent of the company’s entire open cast production. Currently 137 surface miners are actively functional in six subsidiaries. We will be implementing 11 more surface miners during FY23 to our production line, thus scaling up the fleet strength to a total of 148.

This apart, CIL’s green cover in its mining areas has expanded significantly to 1468.5 hectares (Ha) during FY22, thus posting a 70 per cent growth over 862 Ha of FY-21.