The Indian Railway Coal Paradox
The world’s second largest government railway has switched to electric power, even as it transports record quantities of coal.
Here’s one of the bigger ironies of my journey through India reporting on climate change and energy transition:
I traveled more than 5,000 miles by rail, virtually all of it on trains pulled by electrified locomotives; yet where ever I went I saw coal piled high on railway cars pulled by those same electric locomotives. The paradox captures the tricky turning point India and the world have reached in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, primarily solar and wind.
The Indian Railways, India’s largest energy consumer, has transitioned its fleet of locomotives to electricity not to save the world nor to “go green” for purposes of publicity (though the railway and Indian government love to boast about it). This transition, long ago from coal to diesel and more recently from diesel to electric, happened because it saves the railway billions annually on the cost of diesel fuel, nearly all of which India must import.
My visit to the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, after a ride on one of the last coal-fired trains on the planet, underscored how far the railway has come — and how far it has to go.
Despite going electric, has the railway really weaned itself off fossil fuels? Well, no. Since more than two-thirds of India’s electricity is generated from coal, that’s more or less the proportion of the electricity the railway is drawing on for its new power source. Now, since electrical propulsion is considerably more efficient than diesel power, progress is being made.
But India’s larger dependence on coal is amply underscored by the long chains of coal transport rakes I passed in my travels.
As a spring heat wave and India’s economic bounceback from Covid lockdowns strained the country’s power grid, the railway has scrambled to race coal supplies to thermal power generation plants across the nation to limit power cuts. This is good business for the railway.
Coal remains the railway’s single largest and most profitable freight class — another way the Indian Railways remains, like the rest of the country, highly dependent on coal.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine this year has cost India tens of billions of dollars as turmoil in the oil market has pushed up prices — even for countries, like India, willing to purchase discounted Russian oil
That has India — like Europe, albeit to a lesser and more self-tortured extent — looking favorably on coal. Where Europe is extending the operations of some coal generators it had planned to phase out, India is newly considering expansions to its coal fleet. Both moves are a nod to the growing concerns countries everywhere have about energy security amid the energy transition and a more turbulent geopolitical environment.
Those worries can’t be dismissed, with parts of Europe at war and tensions rising in Asia over Taiwan. They will persist as long as the world remains deeply dependent on fossil fuels, whether it’s Russian gas piped to Europe or Saudi Arabian oil shipped through the South China Sea.
Still, the flip side of the Indian rail coal paradox shouldn’t be forgotten. Indian Railways transitioned from coal to diesel to electric because it made financial sense. With the cost of renewable energy in India now well below that of coal — and practicalities such as how to store some of that energy for use when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing being worked out — many of Indian Railway’s coal customers will eventually figure out how to phase out coal as well.
The government is already pushing renewable energy hard, upping incentives for solar and wind power and rolling out an ambitious plan to become a global player in green hydrogen production. Green hydrogen is derived from solar and wind power and can then burned cleanly or stored.
Renewable energy is growing rapidly in India, faster than every other major country in the past year. It will grow even faster from here on. The country is aiming for half its electricity to be produced by non-fossil resources by 2030. Because the country’s electricity consumption is also growing fast — on the order of 6% a year — coal won’t likely go into decline by then.
But as with the railway, the gears will be well in motion to send coal into terminal decline not long after that, perhaps at a pace far faster than many now foresee.
