New Delhi [India], November 19 : India should secure supply chains for nuclear fuel and develop indigenous technologies to ensure that nuclear power plays a larger role in our diversified energy mix, said Periasamy Kumaran, Special Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, at the CII Energy Security Conference in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Kumaran further stated that phasing out of coal while managing the social impact on communities that heavily rely on coal will remain a critical challenge as the India targets the three goals of energy security, environmental sustainability and economic growth.

"Coal is the backbone of our power generation accounting for 17 per cent of our energy production, and is seen as an affordable and viable source of energy. With substantial coal reserves, India uses coal to buffer its energy security including specially for periods of high demand, and shortages" said Kumaran, while commending the strides the country has taken in renewable energy sector.

He highlighted that the India's ambitious targets of generating 500 GW of our renewable energy requirements by 2030, strong decarbonisation targets for the mobility sector, green hydrogen mission reflects its resolve to enhance energy security and sustainability.

He also added that policy incentives under the PLI scheme for solar PV systems, electric vehicles, and electrolysers manufacturing shows the country's determination.

India's energy transition has deeply drawn us into global supply chains of solar module, wind-turbines, critical minerals, semi-conductors, which are stretched and volatile, he added, indicating that in case of critical minerals, geopolitical concerns around their concentration and processing capacities in few pockets of world remain.

Control over these resources can become sources of geo-political tension, and give rise to new coalitions, he added.

Dr Pallavi Jain Govil, Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said oil and gas exploration is set to begin in the Andaman Basin, with hopes for it to become a major discovery. "We are hoping that the exploration in the Andaman Basin will turn out to be the new Mumbai High for us" she said. Dr Govil emphasized the DGH's push to make high-quality geoscientific data available to prospective investors, increasing confidence in India's exploration opportunities.

Dr Govil underlined the importance of high-quality geological data to attract investment, and announced efforts to move India's National Data Repository (NDR) to the cloud to improve data accessibility and sharing capabilities. She shared details of partnerships with the University of Houston, IIT Bombay, and IIT Madras to host exploration data and collaborate on new energy technologies.

"Coal accounts for 55 per cent of consumption. Just like several countries in the world are intensively using coal, they cannot get-away from coal, we also can't get away from coal. We consume 1 billion tonne of coal and we have 200 billion of coal underground. We have enough. Problem is of quality of coal and pollution. Those things can be tackled, we can together tackle through R&D. Coal Ministry has several initiatives in this space. We have to work on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCU) technologies to make use of coal," said Prabh Das, MD and COO, HPCL Mittal Energy Limited.