Assessing possibilities for coal continuance in India under climate constraints

•Advanced clean coal technologies and CCS could provide promising solutions for reducing CO2 emissions up to 45% in comparison to BAU by 2050.•Coal demand changes to 1100-1400 Mt in 2030 and 1132-2200 Mt in 2050 under alternate future scenarios•CO2 emissions from coal changes to 45-69% in 2030 and 34-67% of the total emissions in 2050 under alternate future scenarios.•Mitigation measures first decarbonize the power sector due to availability of flexible choices. Simultaneously it decarbonizes the other economic sectors.•Analysis shows that energy security and deep GHG emission mitigation is possible. Rapid shift from traditional energy intensive pathways is required to pace-up economic growth before exhausting remaining carbon budget under 2 °C global stabilization target. Within this larger context, in this paper we have used AIM/End-use, a bottom-up, techno-economic model to analyze India's energy security and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the year 2000 to 2050 with a focus on possibilities of coal continuance in India. Our analysis shows that by adopting advanced coal technologies and carbon dioxide capture and sequestration (CCS) options, up to 45% CO2 emission reduction can be achieved over business-as-usual scenario (BAU) by 2050. This is possible even when coal use would increase to nearly 2200 Mt in 2050 as against 870 Mt in 2017-18. Without CCS, coal use could peak at 1200 Mt with 22% CO2 reduction over BAU in 2050 but in that case nuclear and renewable energy would become pivotal in meeting energy demand. The paper concludes that a win-win integration of energy security and deep GHG emission mitigation is possible through a large-scale integration of advanced coal technologies and CCS in Indian energy systems. We have also provided a brief PESTLE analysis for finding the enabling environment necessary for achieving the results discussed in various scenarios.