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An old fuel, a familiar risk: Kashmir’s return to lignite
A fuel from the past returns as Kashmir searches for winter power
Srinagar: As the Kashmir Valley shivers through yet another winter of routine power cuts—temperatures plunging well below freezing, homes slipping into darkness for hours each day—the Jammu and Kashmir government has turned back to a long-abandoned idea: lignite.
More than three decades after militancy forced exploration to stop, officials have resumed drilling at the Nicha Hama lignite deposits in Kupwara. Mohammad Yaseen Bhat, senior geologist at the J&K Geology and Mining Department, told Mint that detailed drilling is now under way to assess both the quantity and quality of lignite and determine possible end use.
The move reopens an old question with new urgency: can a rare indigenous baseload fuel ease the Valley's chronic winter power shortages, or will poor fuel quality, high costs and environmental risks once again stall the project?
The renewed push follows a familiar logic. Government records show that winter power shortages were flagged as early as the 1960s, when frozen rivers crippled hydropower generation and households turned to forest wood for heating. Lignite, officials believed, could offer winter electricity while reducing deforestation, provided technology could overcome its limitations.
A promise buried in the archives
Archival records of the Geological Survey of India show that systematic investigations carried out in the early 1920s had already confirmed extensive, continuous lignite seams at Nicha Hama village.Conducted by the then Mineral Survey, the studies established that the deposits occurred as underground seams rather than scattered outcrops, with reserve estimates running into tens of millions of tonnes. They also cautioned that the lignite's industrial potential would depend heavily on the availability of suitable technology.
Laboratory analyses characterised the Nicha Hama lignite as a moderate-grade fuel, with an average ash content of around 30%, moisture levels of roughly 15%, and a calorific value higher than firewood but far lower than good-quality coal. These properties, the surveys noted, limited direct industrial use and made large-scale applications such as power generation technologically demanding.
Despite this, official interest persisted. The Indian Bureau of Mines mapped the seam in detail between 1960 and 1963. In the early 1980s, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd prepared a feasibility report for a 60 MW thermal power station based on local lignite. In 1984, the Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd assessed whether a winter-only plant consuming about 230,0000 tonnes annually could work.
The proposal stalled after Neyveli flagged gaps in drilling data and concerns over seam continuity and fuel quality. Mineral Exploration Corp. Ltd resumed work in 1989 but managed to drill only 16 boreholes before militancy brought everything to a halt. An interim report submitted in 1990 confirmed two major lignite horizons, disrupted by multiple geological faults.
A village and an abandoned industry
Located about 21 km west of Handwara and 94 km from Srinagar, Nicha Hama nonetheless emerged as the Valley's most promising lignite site. Before operations stopped in December 1989, J&K Minerals Ltd had been extracting lignite and converting it into briquettes at a unit in Srinagar's Zainakote Industrial Estate.Residents still recall the scale and effort involved. Lignite appeared only after removing massive layers of overburden, and the soft, brown-to-black, woody fuel once seemed full of promise. Today, faint traces of that abandoned industry remain as drilling teams return to re-read the geology.
Bashir Ahmad Peer, a 60-year-old resident, said extraction activities stopped around 1989 just as exploration was expanding. “Back then nearly 300 people from this village and adjoining areas were working here. There was very little machinery then, but the work gave people jobs.”
He told Mint that fresh sampling resumed in October this year, reviving hopes of employment. “Most people now depend on daily labour or go outside the state for work. When machines came this year, villagers got work, and if a thermal power plant comes up, it can bring jobs back to this area.”
The idea resurfaced again in 2009, when the Omar Abdullah-led government approached the Union coal ministry to assess whether the deposits could sustain a thermal power project. At the time, the J&K government estimated more than seven million tonnes of lignite were available, even as experts warned about its inferior grade and inefficient combustion.
The revival—and the red flags
The current round of drilling began more than two years after the Geology and Mining Department, Kashmir, approached MECL and the Union secretary of Mines in 2023 to resume investigations.Bhat, the geologist with the J&K Geology and Mining Department, told Mint that following a request from the J&K government, the Union coal ministry revived investigations decades after they were halted due to militancy. He said about 5,000 metres of drilling is planned, with the exercise expected to conclude by June or July 2026. MECL will then prepare a feasibility report covering resource estimates, quality parameters and utilisation pathways.
Mumtaz Ahmad Shah, district mineral officer, Kupwara, said testing would determine carbon content and grade, helping decide whether the lignite could support power generation or be used in brick kilns and cement factories. He said the deposits are currently classified under the G4 category, requiring detailed exploration before commercial decisions. The Centre will later decide whether the block is allocated through tender or e-auction, a move that could have wider implications for the local economy and J&K's energy planning.
Geologists argue that Kashmir's Himalayan geology holds significant reserves of minerals—from lithium to lignite—that could bolster the economy with the right technology.
Properly utilized, they say, lignite could power the Valley's first thermal plant, providing an indigenous baseload source in a region still heavily dependent on imported electricity. In 2022 alone, J&K took a ₹31,000 crore loan to clear dues to external power suppliers.
Mir Aijaz, professor of civil engineering at the Islamic University of Science and Technology Kashmir, told Mint that lignite can generate power only if advanced processing technology is available. “We can extract a number of valuable minerals available in the Himalayas, but the real question is whether we have the technology required to harness them and strengthen different sectors of the economy,” he said.
Others are more sceptical. Iftikhar A Drabu, a consulting civil engineer with decades in hydropower, warned that local lignite is low grade, moisture-rich and ash-heavy. If its quality mirrors Kalakote's, India's first coal-fired plant, commissioned in 1963 and shut in 1987, it could prove disastrous, especially in an ecologically fragile region like Kashmir, he said.
Drabu also challenged the belief that hydropower alone can anchor Kashmir's energy future. With glaciers receding and river flows becoming erratic, he warned that capacity could shrink over the next two decades.
Today, nearly 80% of J&K's electricity is imported from thermal plants in Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan. Whether lignite can meaningfully reduce that dependence, Drabu said, hinges not on hope, but on a hard assessment of quality, cost and ecological consequence at Nicha Hama.
Source: LiveMint
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