Thermal power is back in business as govt makes commitment clear

Deals in Punjab and Odisha shows coal-fired plants are crucial to economy

Punjab bought in January a private coal-fired plant for Rs 1,080 crore and before that Odisha public sector BHEL won a bid to build three such units for some Rs 20,000 crore, showing that withdrawing from thermal power was “premature”.

Not without reason. Late November, Union Minister R K Singh said: “Given the power needs, the industry will keep getting orders for thermal capacity addition for the next five-seven years”. “Thermal energy was written off a few years ago, which was premature,” he said in a meeting with power companies and others.

The capacity building is a change from 2017-18