India will rely on coal as it spreads electricity to millions of citizens who today go without, ClearPath founder and CEO Jay Faison said in a recent commentary. This is a massive opportunity for the United States to provide environmental assistance in the form of carbon capture systems, he said.
“If there was ever a prime example of the need for U.S.-led carbon-capture technologies, it’s India,” according to Faison.
About 240 million people in India today do not have access to electricity, 20 percent of the global population of 1.2 billion living in that situation, the Oct. 20 commentary says. Demand in India is expected to rise by more than four times as access increases.
Solar is part of the solution to meet the nation’s energy needs, but it won’t get the job done alone, the conservative entrepreneur said. India has the fifth-largest coal reserve on Earth, and plans a more than twofold boost in coal output over the next half-decade, Faison wrote.
“Pound for pound, and electron for electron, coal is roughly 15% cheaper than solar,” he noted. “That is not counting the cost of having power on demand to fill in when the sun isn’t shining, or the increased cost of transmission lines for solar that is more spread out. So it’s no wonder why India is expected to build nearly half of all new coal plants worldwide in the next 25 years.”
This is where the “secret sauce” of U.S. innovation comes in, Faison said. He highlighted the Petra Nova project in Texas, which will be the world’s largest post-combustion CCS system on a coal-fired power plant and is due to be fully operational by January; and Mississippi Power’s Kemper County Energy Facility which, while billions of dollars over budget and two years behind schedule, is due to begin full operations in November.
“These innovative projects are the sort of technology that could boom along with Asian coal, boosting America’s economy, as long as we can win the technological race with Canada and China,” Faison stated.