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.
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.
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"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.
"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.
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.