India's $103b Coal Power Boom Is Running Low on Water

Projects expected to cause conflict between industry, residents over limited resources

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CHANDRAPUR/SOLAPUR, India April marks the start of the cruelest months for residents of Solapur, a hot and dry district in western India.

As temperatures soar, water availability dwindles. In peak summer, the wait for taps to flow can stretch to a week or more.

Just a decade ago, water flowed every other day, according to the local government and residents of Solapur, some 400km inland from Mumbai.

Then, in 2017, a 1,320MW coal-fired power plant run by state-controlled power generation company NTPC began operations. It provided the district with energy and competed with residents and businesses for water from a reservoir that serves the area.

Solapur illustrates the situation facing India, which has 17 per cent of the planet's population but access to only 4 per cent of its water resources.

The world's most populous country plans to spend nearly US$80 billion (S$103 billion) on water-hungry coal plants by 2031 to power growing industries like data centre operations.

The vast majority of these new projects are planned for India's driest areas, according to a Power Ministry document reviewed by Reuters, which is not public and was created for officials to track progress.

Many of the 20 people interviewed by Reuters for this story, which included power company executives, energy officials and industry analysts, said the thermal expansion likely portended future conflict between industry and residents over limited water resources.

Thirty-seven of the 44 new projects named in the undated Power Ministry shortlist of future operations are located in areas that the government classifies as either suffering from water scarcity or stress. NTPC, which says it draws 98.5 per cent of its water from water-stressed areas, is involved in nine of them.