The aluminium industries association of India (AAI) has implored the government to prioritize the supply of coal to the sector to avert massive collateral damage.
Any power outage in aluminium plants will lead to catastrophic impact and complete shutdown which will take minimum 12 months of recovery, resulting in job loss of more than 8 lakh people, banks will have debt exposure of over Rs.1 lakh crore and additional National forex loss of Rs. 90,000 crores, said the AAI.
Uninterrupted Power requirement of 9.4GW (9,400 MW) of the Aluminium industry is less than 6 per cent of the total country’s demand (145 GW) and 123 per cent of total energy traded at the Indian Energy Exchange (-7.6 GW in 2021). Therefore, technically it is not feasible to get this massive power from the Power Grid, pointed out AAI.
Aluminium Industry can not import power and can only meet its power requirement through CPPs for which the Aluminium Industry requires 1.5 lakh tonne of domestic coal daily, it stated.
CIL needs to immediately resume continuous coal supply, said the association.