India’s largest B2B e-commerce company, mjunction services limited, kicked off its two-day 17th Indian Coal Markets Conference at Taj Bengal in Kolkata today. The theme of the conference is “Black to Green: Building a sustainable future for coal” and provides a platform to industry leaders to capture the essence of the transformational changes the coal sector is undergoing.
The conference discussed key issues facing the energy and the coal sector in times of global geopolitical crisis and drive towards emission control and decarbonisation. How India’s energy transition journey is evolving and what would be the optimum mix of fossil-fuel and renewable energy are some of the key issues that were discussed during the first day of the conference.
There were also dedicated sessions on commercial coal mining and dynamics of global energy trade.
Delivering the welcome address, Mr. Vinaya Varma, MD & CEO of mjunction Services Limited said, “Today coal is in demand not only for power generation but for other usages like coal-gasification, steel making and other purposes. But as we go back to coal to meet the accelerated growth in demand for thermal energy, concerns over carbon emission keep raising their heads. It is in this context; the theme of this year’s conference has been chosen.”
In his keynote address, Secretary, Ministry of Coal, Govt of India, Shri Amrit Lal Meena, said: “Coal consumption in India will continue to grow for many years but will peak by 2040. We are now seeing many private sector companies taking up underground (UG) mines in commercial coal mine auction. For just transition, coal mine closure needed to be handled scientifically to protect livelihood by adopting forestations, setting up solar parks, pump storage projects. The entire coal transition is a complex process which would need adoption of global best practices.”
Dr. B. Veera Reddy, Director (Technical), Coal India Ltd. commenting on the growth for new projects and production roadmap said, “By 2025-26, We are planning 1 billion tons of coal production. By 2030, our coal loading will be fully mechanized.”
At a press meet on the sidelines of the conference, Mr Varma said, “mjunction has been appointed as the exclusive service provider of CIL for conducting the Linkage e-auctions, and it has launched a completely revamped platform for CIL on 28th December 2023.”
So far, mjunction has conducted linkage auctions for the cement, sponge iron and power sectors, accounting for nearly 15 million tons of coal. Linkage auctions for Captive Power Plants, Steel (Coking Coal) and Syngas is slated to begin soon. mjunction is working closely with CIL in some of its digitisation initiatives and in a significant achievement, it has designed and implemented the digital signing of Fuel Supply Agreements (FSAs) for Coal India for winners of linkage auctions, Mr Varma added.
