By Juan, Fuyo, Fatma, Olivia
<aside> 🚨 Inefficiencies in the ability of the Indian Railway to effectively transport coal is leading to a power crisis as 60% power plants running on domestic coal reported critically low coal levels$^2$, leading to a lack of electricity for homes, education facilities, transportation, and hospitals$^3$ and a financial loss of $24.24 million.
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The Indian Railways (IR) is the fourth most largest and extensive railway system in the world at an operating route length of more than 65,000km$^1$. It serves as the national railway system of India.
Given it’s immense size and reach, India is highly reliable on this railway system. More specifically, India heavily relies on this railway system as a means of transportation for coal.
From April of 2022 to March of 2023, approximately 652,800,000 metric tons of coal were transported through the Indian Railways$^4$.
This amount represents more than half (approximately 57%) of India’s total coal consumption for grid electricity generation, which is transported through the Indian railways $^{5}$ $^6$.
Now, coal on its own, makes up approximately 75% of India’s total power generation$^7$ $^8$.
This equates to about 1,218,118,500,000 units of electrical consumption that’s reliant on coal in India.
It’s very clear India's electrical infrastructure has a heavy reliance on coal alongside the Indian Railways for its transportation.
The power sector in India is facing substantial financial losses and causing hardships for the citizens of India due to inefficiencies in the IR system.
The IR is a interdependent system that relies on the seamless cooperation of both the coal industry and the Ministry of Railways who runs the IR.
Yet, the seamless cooperation and coordination between the coal industry and the Ministry of Railways is plagued by many logistical inefficiencies that can heavily impact the Indian power supply.
There’s often a disproportionality in the ratio between available railway rakes used to transport coal and the available coal stock.
83 out of 153 power plants that run on Indian coal reported very low coal levels citing a lack of railway rakes as the root cause$^2$.
In addition, the IR has admitted that they’ve previously exhausted their capacity to transport coal due to a lack of railway rakes $^{12}$ $^{13}$.
These are Railway Rakes
Why is there a misalignment between the amount of railway rakes and the coal supply?
A huge part of this highly systemic problem lied in the past insufficient investment from the Indian government in its railway infrastructure.
Yet, even with recent increases of government investment into the IR $^{10}$ $^{11}$, issues still plague the ability to adequately allocate railway rakes based on coal supply and demand.
The challenges leading to the misallocation of railway rakes include: