World Coal Association, whose corporate members include Coal India, Peabody, Adani group, Suek, Caterpillar among others, on Monday renamed itself as FutureCoal Global Alliance and underlined the importance of coal in the energy basket and future areas of diversification.
The alliance in a statement said that it will act as a multilateral, neutral and progressive organisation representing the entire coal chain and dedicated to raising awareness to the contribution of coal.
The alliance also unveiled sustainable coal stewardship (SCS) aimed at extracting more value per ton of coal with value being determined both in terms of economic and environmental benefits.
SCS will have three components - pre-combustion which includes abatement opportunities such as the adoption of efficient mining process, digitalisation, and waste management among others.
Combustion includes efficiency technologies which when combined, supports power and heat utilities to abate and capture 99 per cent of emissions. Beyond combustion includes diversification into high-value products such as coal to liquid, creating synthetic liquid hydrocarbons, hydrogen, methanol and agri chemicals among others.
"Coal by its very properties is finite. So there will be an eventual end date. But there is still very much a foreseeable and significant future for coal that will go beyond its traditional uses. Any responsible energy transition must include abated coal as part of its solution," said FutureCoal chief executive Michelle Manook.
"We also understand we must educate what the coal innovation and abatement looks like and in this our new organisation is underpinned by what we call sustainable coal stewardship, which provides a pathway of extracting more value per ton of coal," she said.
"The total contribution made by the coal value chain in sectors including steel, cement, aluminium, chemicals and renewables infrastructure is in the order of hundreds of billions and is an interconnected global supply chain. This cannot be ignored. But equally it can only be secured by our value chain acknowledging that change must occur," she said.
