NTPC Ltd., India’s biggest power producer, is in talks with Toshiba Corp. to hire the Japanese company for building a pilot project in India to capture and store carbon emissions, a Toshiba official said.
The Japanese power-equipment maker aims to develop its first 5-megawatt carbon capture plant in India by 2016, Kenji Urai, managing director of its Toshiba India Private Ltd. unit, said in an interview. The project may be similar to one set to start running in 2011 at a 47-megawatt plant at Mikawa in Japan.
“Now that we are almost finished in Japan, we’d like to bring that technology to other parts of the world, like India,” Urai said. “I think in five years we should have it.”
India plans to add about 64,000 megawatts, or the equivalent of more than 50 new nuclear plants, in coal-fired electric plants in the five years through 2017. The nation is searching for ways to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions after having agreed to reduce the greenhouse gas in proportion to gross domestic product by 25 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
NTPC is leading a group of emerging power utilities trying to curb Indian blackouts and increase electricity supplies, which the government estimates are about 10 percent less than demand.
Deepna Mehta, a spokeswoman for NTPC, said company officials declined to comment.
Carbon capture-and-storage technology typically traps emissions and pumps them underground for what its promoters say is safe, permanent storage. So far it has mostly been used in pilot projects and on part of a generator’s total emissions. Critics have pointed to cost.
“It’s certainly not economically feasible because if we fit CCS equipment to a coal-based plant, it would double the investment,” said Shyam Saran during a seminar in New Delhi in April. Saran quit his post as special envoy to the prime minister on climate change in February.
Toshiba in India
Toshiba, Japan’s largest supplier of nuclear reactors, entered the Indian power market through a joint venture with Indian power utility JSW Energy Ltd. Toshiba plans to sell $400 million worth of power-generation equipment in India by 2015.
Through two joint ventures, Toshiba and JSW will open a plant in July in Chennai to make 3,000 megawatts of boilers and turbines a year, Urai said.
The joint venture is expecting orders from NTPC for four 660-megawatt turbines this year and has already received orders for two 660-megawatt turbines and generators from Essar Group for its coal-fired Salaya plant in Gujarat.
