Barack Obama's move to reduce carbon pollution from US power plants by 30%

Amidst the sweltering heat of the Indian summer made worse by intermittent power cuts, the powers that be would do well to dwell on US President Barack Obama's move to reduce carbon pollution from US power plants by 30 per cent.

While the US can well substitute coal with shale gas in its bid to cut emissions, India has to bring in clean-coal technologies and make them viable with Indian coal. The US can help with this.

In the bargain, we would very substantially boost power generation here by revving up the thermal efficiency of our coal-fired plants. Imagine doubling power generation with virtually no increase in coal consumption!

Advanced power generation technologies such as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants, which use the latent heat of gasified coal to verily double thermal efficiency, are already functional in the US.

The 582 MW thermal station at Kemper County, Mississippi, is one its latest IGCC plants. But the US in all probability would lose interest in clean-coal technologies given, for instance, the surge in inexpensive gas output there.

Note that the energy conversion efficiency in our power plants averages in the low thirties. And that for IGCC plants is said to be over 60 per cent, which makes them far more efficient than the supercritical or ultra-supercritical boilers. Hence the huge potential for energy cooperation with the US, to jointly develop IGCC plants under Indian conditions.

In parallel, we need to negotiate long-term funding, say, of the order of $10 billion, from multilateral agencies to systematically, and in a timebound manner, diffuse the IGCC technology pan-India.

Coal is our main source of commercial energy and we do need to leverage the latest technology to effectively tackle rising pollution levels and boost our energy security.