Where’s the extra coal?

If the environment ministry has, as minister Jayanthi Natarajan claims in her letter to the Prime Minister, given environment clearances to 210,000 MW of power capacity and 583 million tonnes of coal production per year—this means both power and coal production can double—the question to ask is why this coal is not being mined. Natarajan’s data, based on a study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), after all, is dramatically different from the figures being put out by industry or even by other arms of the government such as the finance or the roads ministries.

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