-- Built along a stretch of salt flats in southern India, the Tuticorin power plant epitomizes a quagmire for the world’s fastest-growing major economy: how to provide reliable energy to 1.4 billion people.Apple Faces Worst iPhone Slump Since Covid as Rivals RiseFor starters, the 1,050-megawatt coal plant, one of the region’s largest, was supposed to shut down.
India’s power ministry and Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corp., which runs the Tuticorin coal plant, didn’t respond to requests for comment. While shortages raised expectations that the country would accelerate the shift to green energy, India’s response was exactly the opposite. Officials pushed for more mining, abandoned plans to retire old power plants, raised targets to add coal-fired electricity and successfully lobbied international forums to adopt resolutions that wouldn’t hinder fossil fuel use.
Natural gas, pushed by producers as a less-polluting alternative to coal, has also struggled to compete. Nearly 25 gigawatts of gas-fired power capacity has been idling for years, priced out by other power sources, including coal. India doesn’t have enough domestically produced subsidized fuel to run the plants and operating these assets on imported liquefied natural gas is often too costly in India’s price-competitive electricity market.
Consider Kudankulam, about 90 miles south of Tuticorin. The site hosts two reactors of 1 gigawatt each and four more are being added. In the nearby village of Idinthakarai, 52-year-old Mildred, who goes by one name, has been at the forefront of protesting the plant’s construction. She’s traveled across the country to discuss the risks of nuclear energy.
In the western state of Maharashtra, India had planned to build the world’s largest nuclear power plant, a mammoth 9.6 gigawatts facility near sprawling Alphonso mango orchards.