Goyal cautions against indiscriminate coal mining

Indiscriminate mining of natural resources without "care and concern" for the environment has resulted in certain consequences that are not very good for the country, Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said today.
His comments come at a time when the government is looking to ramp up coal production to boost power generation as part of plans to provide electricity for all by 2019.
"The indiscriminate mining of natural resources, sometimes without care and concern for the environment, sometimes without adequate planning for safety, and often without proper systems in place... I think has led to certain consequences and certain consumption patterns which are not very good for the nation," Goyal said here.

Goyal is also the Minister of State for Power as well as New and Renewable Energy.
He was participating at the inaugural of 'Global Energy Technology Summit' (GETS) 2014, organised by state-owned power producer NTPC.
New and Renewable Energy Secretary Upendra Tripathy said the government would be setting up a national university for renewable energy. Plans are also on the anvil for a museum on renewables.

Speaking on the occasion, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government R Chidambaram said that nuclear energy is important and has synergy with renewables.
"After Fukushima nuclear accident, some people predicted that nuclear power is going to decline. However, evidence suggests that it will not be the case. There are now something like 70 reactors under construction in different parts of the world," he said.

NTPC CMD Arup Roy Choudhury said that coal would remain the basic fuel for power plants for a long time.
"The basic fuel will remain coal for a very very long time. So we will have to work very hard on coal, keeping in view the sensitivities of the environment," he noted.
NTPC Director (Technical) A K Jha said that as many as 42 units of power plants, having more than 23,000 MW generation capacity, are under construction. The entire engineering for these units are being done in house, he added.
Separately, addressing the company's employees as it completed 39 years of existence today, Choudhury said the time has come for a "paradigm shift" in NTPC and the key to its future growth lies in forward and backward integration.

He said NTPC has been instrumental in bringing all the major power equipment manufacturers to set up units in India.
This has been done by way of its bulk tender scheme, which is in line with the government's vision of encouraging manufacturing by "Make in India" initiative, he added.