World’s largest coal miner Coal India Limited said that it will invest Rs 5,650 crore (around $763 million) by March 2024 for building 14 solar projects to help power its mining operations and to reduce cost.
The company said, “The solar power initiative helps Coal India Ltd (CIL) reduce its whopping annual power consumption expense,” adding to that it said such costs accounted for 4.4 per cent of the company’s annual costs.
Coal India will be funding nearly two-thirds of its plan with cash for constructing rooftop and ground-mounted solar power projects which has a capacity of 3,000 MW (megawatts).
The state-run company that contributes about 82 per cent of the total coal production in India said in a statement that joint venture (JV) with lignite miner NLC India Ltd. will finance the rest of its solar expansion plan. Coal India also plans for producing 1 billion tonnes of coal per year by 2023/24. For the first time in more than two decades its output fell in 2019/20 to nearly about 603 million tones.