photosoup/Adobe Stock

It’s the largest coal miner in the world, and accounts for at least 80% of India’s coal production.

Benchmark Your Current Metal Price by Grade, Shape and Alloy: See How it Stacks Up

Now, faced with India’s onward march on the path of renewable energy, Coal India Ltd (CIL) finds itself stuttering. So much so that it has decided to shutter as many as 37 coal mines by March of next year.

India’s Coal Ministry, in a review meeting with CIL and its subsidiaries, took special note of the fact that a substantial number of mines had not been able to recover costs in the form of even salaries paid to the workers. It then directed CIL’s arms to conduct a detailed study of such mines and report on action taken.

CIL also explained away the decision, saying its subsidiaries undertake an annual exercise to determine profit- and loss-making mines for comparative study of performance. The decision has been met, predictably, with protests from local labor unions. If and when the mines are shuttered, it would help the company save about $124 million. The mines make up about 9% of the total number of mines operated by CIL.

CIL is not alone in facing the challenge represented by the growing renewable energy sector.

One estimate by the Energy and Resources Institute predicts if the cost of renewable energy and storage continue to fall, India may phase out coal power completely by 2050. Both solar and wind energy prices have been steadily decreasing over the last three years.

In 2016-17, India added over 14,000 megawatts of new renewable energy power compared to almost 7,000 megawatts of new coal power capacity.

But green energy is not the only new challenge coal mines face.

Read more

Zerophoto/Adobe Stock

A new front seems to have opened up in India’s steel wars.

Only this time, the country seems to be fighting for its steel companies to be allowed to sell its steel in a foreign market.

India has complained to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the U.S. had failed to drop anti-subsidy duties on certain Indian steel products. The move comes on the heels of India itself having imposed anti-dumping duty on 47 steel products from six nations in May.

According to the Indian government, the U.S. had not kept its promise of an April 2016 deadline to comply with a WTO ruling that faulted it for imposing countervailing duties on hot-rolled carbon steel flat products from India.

In December 2014, the WTO ruled against the U.S.’s move to impose high duty on imports of certain Indian steel products. The world body said the high duty by the U.S. was inconsistent with various provisions of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

The U.S. sought time until the April 2016 deadline to comply with the ruling. Realizing that the deadline had passed away without any action on part of the U.S. authorities, India has now requested the WTO dispute consultations with the U.S. regarding U.S. compliance.

Some experts say the U.S. will have to amend its domestic norms to comply with the WTO’s verdict on countervailing duties.

In May, India imposed anti-dumping duty on products from six nations — China, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia — to protect its own industry from cheap imports.

Read more

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two posts — the first of which ran yesterday — from our Sohrab Darabshaw on renewable energy in India. 

India saw nearly $10 billion invested, both in 2015 and in 2016, in renewable energy projects. Last year, $1.9 billion of green bonds were issued. India’s solar targets alone need $100 billion of debt.

Benchmark Your Current Metal Price by Grade, Shape and Alloy: See How it Stacks Up

Posting in the Bloomberg View opinion section, columnist Mihir Sharma, however, struck a slightly skeptical note.

“India is not like China, or the U.S., or Australia or Germany when it comes to meeting its Paris pledges,” he wrote. “In India, hundreds of millions of people still live without electricity — a big part of what keeps them desperately poor. India also has a shrunken manufacturing sector, partly because electricity is so expensive (relatively) and its supply so variable. No democratically accountable Indian government can ever favor an international agreement over fixing these two problems.”

Sharma added coal “looks bad” in India at the moment because “its economy is struggling and because it is so services-intensive. Over the past few years, coal plants have used less and less of their capacity as growth has slowed.”

But, if India’s economy does take off, Prime Minister Narendra Modi might indeed be faced with such a choice.

Read more

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two posts from our Sohrab Darabshaw on the renewables industry in India. Check back tomorrow for Part 2. 

Energy experts, the domestic media, research organizations and even representatives of other governments seem pretty sure that India is the next green-energy giant in the making (U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent assertions notwithstanding).

Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook

Trump, while announcing his country’s intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, justified it on the grounds that the agreement was unfair to the U.S., and that it was skewed unfairly in favour of developing countries, such as India.

In the wake of that move, many in the Indian media have pointed out that a fact that the Trump administration seemed to have missed was that while India was the third-largest contributor to carbon emissions today, the U.S. was the second. The U.S.’s per capita carbon emission was still significantly higher than other large countries, according to data from the World Bank, and far higher than that of both India and China, according to a report in the online publication Scroll.

Not many within or outside the country are doubting India’s stated aim of ensuring that 40% of energy used would come from non-fossil fuels and rapidly developing renewable energy sources by 2030.

Read more

ft2010/Adobe Stock

Two significant developments on the steel front took place last week that will ensure that India continued on its chalked-out path of global dominance in steel production.

Benchmark Your Current Metal Price by Grade, Shape and Alloy: See How it Stacks Up

Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) launched its 6 million ton per annum (MTPA) integrated steel plant at Angul in the Odisha province. The plant, one of the biggest in India, was dedicated to the nation on May 27, 2017. Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Odisha, said the plant would lead to an addition of 20% of steel to India’s ultimate goal of steel manufacturing capacity of 300 MTPA by 2030.

For JSPL, this was a major milestone, too. According to Chairman Naveen Jindal, the 6 MTPA steel plant at Angul was a major landmark in defining the future growth trajectory of JSPL. The latter is part of US $18 billion diversified O.P. Jindal Group.

Spread over 3,500 acres, JSPL’s integrated steel plant at Angul will provide direct employment opportunities to over 30,000 people and indirect employment to over 100,000 individuals.

JSPL’s capacity addition would further enhance the cost efficiencies of steelmaking — a continuous focus area of JSPL’s business philosophy, adding to its overall plan of debt reduction, said some of its top honchos.

In another development on the steel front, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer, said it has agreed to make concessions to Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) to jumpstart a delayed US $897 million automotive joint venture.

ArcelorMittal and SAIL, according to a report by news agency Reuters, had agreed to a proposal to export a fifth of the auto-grade steel they aimed to make as part of the joint venture.

Incidentally, the proposal was one of several made by Indian government think tank NITI Aayog, which is mediating talks on commercial terms for the delayed venture.

At present, a bulk of the high-grade steel used by India’s vehicle industry was imported from countries such as Japan. With this new joint venture all set to take off, reliance on such imported steel would fall drastically, experts say.

The Reuters report quoted a company spokesperson as saying that in the interest of the strategic partnership, some concession from ArcelorMittal on technology had been extended.

Experts believe if the deal does come to fruition, it would help SAIL compete with local rivals, such as JSW Steel and Tata Steel, which have foreign partnerships to make steel for the car industry.

AdobeStock/FenrisWolf

It’s a story of two democratic countries and the policies they pursue vis-à-vis energy.

Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook

So while the U.S. under President Donald Trump is kind of trying to revive its coal industry, far away India is doing the opposite – embracing clean energy with a vengeance and relying on it for much of its energy needs.

That’s one of the many reasons why India has also managed to beat the U.S. to the number two position in the renewable energy investment index released recently by UK-based accountancy firm Ernst & Young. China has continued to remain on top of this list, while the U.S. is now third. This is an annual ranking of the top 40 renewable energy markets in the world.

Those who prepared the report said that industry-friendly policies laid down by the Indian government, along with increasingly attractive economics, had changed the entire climate of the renewable energy sector of India.

Under Trump, the U.S. is seeing a shift in its energy policy. The president has issued orders to roll back many of the previous administration’s climate change policies, revive the U.S. coal industry and review the Clean Power Plan. Compare this to India’s neighbor China, which has announced that it would be spending $363 billion on developing renewable power capacity by 2020. Read more

There have been some doubts over India’s stated plans to triple its steel production capacity by 2030. The Indian cabinet recently passed a revamped policy to the extent.

While some have welcomed the document, other sector experts have expressed uncertainty over the projections in the policy.

Free Download: The May 2017 MMI Report

Ratings agency Crisil, for example, said in a statement that the ambition to add 182 million tons of new steel capacities over the next 14 years under the National Steel Policy was unlikely to be achieved. Crisil’s doubts seem logical. After all, India has managed to add capacity at the annual rate of 55 million tons in the last decade.

The National Steel Policy 2017 projects crude steel production capacity of 300 million tons by 2030-31 from the present level of about 120 million tons and per-capita consumption of 158 kilograms of finished steel as against the current consumption of 61 kilograms. The policy also sees an increase in domestic availability of washed coking coal by 2030-31.

Crisil Research said that it expects 24-26 million tons of steel capacities to be added over the next five years, leading to aggregate steel capacity to rise to 140-145 million tons by 2021-22. Beyond this, Crisil said, the key factors that would determine the pace of capacity addition would be demand growth, continued government support, and pricing environment against the backdrop of global overcapacity led by China. Crisil has also projected a 6-6.5% growth in steel demand in India over the next five years, lower than the 7% annual growth rate projected by the government till 2030. Read more

India’s steel story continues to shine. The country’s consumption of finished steel goods is expected to grow by 6.1% in 2017 compared with 2016.

According to the World Steel Association (WSA), India’s steel product demand could reach 88.6 million tons in 2017, up from 83.5 million tons in 2016. WSA was also quite positive on India’s steel demand in 2018, projecting a growth of 7.1% to 94.9 million tons.

Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook

Steel consumption in India’s neighboring country China, however, would remain flat in 2017. The WSA estimated a 2% slump in demand for 2018.

The Indian Steel Association, too, has said publicly that the country was well on its way to becoming the second largest consumer of steel, beating the United States to the second spot.

The WSA said in its report that the U.S. was expected to continue to lead the growth in the developed work in 2017-18, based on strong fundamentals, newly announced measures related to fiscal stimuli, and rising infrastructure spending. It has estimated that steel demand in the U.S. will grow by 3% in 2017 to 94.3 million tons and then by 2.9% in 2018 to 97.1 million tons.

Free Download: The April 2017 MMI Report

In India, in a further fillip to steel production, the government was contemplating making the use of Indian steel compulsory in all government or public sector funded projects. This would raise the per-capita consumption from 61 kilograms (134.5 pounds) to 160 kilograms (353 pounds) and increase production from 120 million ton to 300 million ton by 2030. The indication of this was recently given by Union Minister for Steel Chaudhary Birender Singh.

After reviewing the performance of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the minister told reporters that “stringent measures” like imposing anti-dumping duty and minimum import price (MIP) had led to imports falling by 39% and exports increasing by 57%.

He added that the India’s national policy on steel would be unveiled soon, after receiving approval of the Union Cabinet.

Free Sample Report: Our Annual Metal Buying Outlook

The move to make use of “Make in India” steel mandatory by government bodies comes in the wake of the central government’s commitment to support the domestic steel sector, which has been incurring losses during the last couple of years due to excess production and dumping of steel products from China into India.

Incidentally, India was aiming for a steel production capacity of 300 million tons by 2030, while the current capacity is 120 million tons and production was 90 million tons.

India’s renewable energy sector just got bigger thanks to an investment from U.K.-owned CDC Group  of up to $100 million to support renewable energy projects.

Benchmark Your Current Metal Price by Grade, Shape and Alloy: See How it Stacks Up

The announcement was made by the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy Greg Clark at the inaugural India-U.K. Energy for Growth Dialogue in New Delhi on April 6. He also met with India’s Minister for Power, New & Renewable Energy, Coal and Mines, Piyush Goyal, to talk about large-scale, private sector investments between the two countries in the area of energy.

The two ministers agreed that on the power and renewables front, the focus will be on the introduction of performance-improving smart technologies, energy efficiency and accelerating the deployment of renewable energy.

For some time now, CDC Group Plc, the U.K. government’s development finance institution, has made its known that it seeks to set up its own renewable energy platform focused on the eastern part of India, and even neighboring countries such as Bangladesh.

The finance institution is contemplating leveraging its experience in running Globeleq Africa, a company in which it acquired a majority stake in 2015, for green energy investments in Asia. Globeleq has a 1,200-megawatt gren power generation capacity spread across Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.

As reported by MetalMiner, India aims to generate over half of its electricity through renewable and nuclear energy by 2027. The world’s largest democracy published a draft 10-year national electricity plan in December, which said it aimed to generate 275 gigawatts of renewable energy, and about 85 gw of other non-fossil fuel power such as nuclear energy, by the next decade. This would make up 57% of the country’s total electricity capacity by 2027, more than meeting its commitment to the Paris Agreement of generating 40% of its power through non-fossil fuel means by 2030.

Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook

India has been taking massive forward strides in the renewable energy sector. Already, as per one estimate, it is set to overtake Japan as the world’s third-largest solar power market in 2017.  Taiwanese research firm EnergyTrend predicted that the global solar photovoltaic demand was expected to remain stable at 74 gw in 2017, with the Indian market experiencing sustained growth. The country was expected to add 14% to the global solar photovoltaic demand, the equivalent of the addition of 90 gw over the next five years.

As requested by Japan, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has set up a dispute settlement panel to decide the row over India’s imposition of a safeguard duty on imports of iron and steel products.

Benchmark Your Current Metal Price by Grade, Shape and Alloy: See How it Stacks Up

MetalMiner has reported on this case in the past. Japan’s request was made after New Delhi imposed safeguard duties on several iron and steel products, which India claimed violated global trade rules.

India’s finance ministry imposed definitive safeguard duties on imports of hot-rolled flat products of non-alloy steel in coils to counter a surge in imports from several countries, including Japan. India’s stand has been that such cheap imports “caused injury to domestic steel industries.”

As both the nations failed to arrive at a solution, Japan petitioned the WTO for the formation of a dispute resolution panel.

Soon after the WTO announcement, though, India objected to Japan’s WTO request for a “prompt’’ resolution of its dispute against India’s duties on steel imports.

India’s contention is that there’s “no rationale” for treating the dispute any more urgently than other WTO disputes it’s involved in and the same standard should be applied to all disputes.

In December, Japan dragged India to the WTO against measures taken on imports of iron and steel products. Incidentally, Japan is the second-largest steel producer in the world.

The dispute assumes some amount of significance as both India and Japan signed a comprehensive free trade agreement, meant to avoid this type of arbitration, in 2011.

This was Japan’s second attempt to ask the WTO to set up a panel after the first was blocked by India in March. India expressed disappointment over Japan’s insistence on the WTO panel despite its “sincere efforts” to resolve the matter in a bilateral manner.

It normally takes about 20 months to settle a dispute at the WTO, but according to WTO rules, in cases of urgency, the parties to the dispute, panels and the Appellate Body make every effort to accelerate the proceedings.

Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook

The Japanese government reportedly estimated that the tariffs could cost Japanese steel companies about $220 million through March 2018.

The safeguard duties imposed by India also gave rise to complaints from other WTO members.