Kamal Ghorui
Smart use of coal can shield India from foreign crises
When the US blocked oil supplies to Cuba last month, a 56-year-old mechanic named Juan Carlos Pino found a clever solution. He changed his old 1980 Fiat car so it could run on charcoal. He didn’t use a steam engine. Instead, he built a simple device called a gasifier. It heats charcoal in a closed tank and produces a gas that can run the engine. If one mechanic can do this, imagine what scientists and engineers can do with coal.
China is a good example. The world is facing shortages of oil, gas and fertiliser. But China is less worried because it learned how to make many things from coal instead of oil. It makes urea fertiliser, methanol fuel, and basic chemicals like ethylene and propylene from coal. These chemicals are used to make plastics and textiles.
China, like India, has huge amounts of coal. It makes most of its urea from coal instead of gas. That means Chinese farmers are not as worried about rising fertiliser prices this year. They don’t need to reduce how much corn they grow. The cost of chicken feed and ethanol fuel is also more stable.
India’s plan to use 20% ethanol in petrol could be affected by higher fertiliser prices. China, however, is the world’s biggest producer of methanol, mostly made from coal. It can supply fuels like M15 or even M85 for cars. It has even started building large ships that can run on methanol instead of oil.
China is not the first country to do this. During World War II, Germany made gasoline from coal. In the 1980s, South Africa also made large amounts of fuel from coal when it faced international sanctions.
India has the world’s fourth-largest coal reserves, so it should use coal more smartly. There is a plan to gasify 100 million tonnes of coal by 2030. India is also building a coal-based urea plant in Talcher, Odisha. It was supposed to be ready in 2023, which would have helped today. But now it may not be ready until December 2027.
We need more scientists, of course. But we also need better project management so important plans don’t get delayed.
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