Water once a week: how coal giants are winning the battle for life with India’s villagers
9 June 09:21
India plans to invest about $80 billion in the construction of new coal-fired power plants by 2031 to meet growing energy needs, particularly for data centers. However, the vast majority of these projects will be located in regions that already suffer from water shortages. This creates a paradoxical situation for a country with 17% of the world’s population and only 4% of global water resources, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
According to an internal energy ministry document reviewed by Reuters, 37 of the 44 new energy projects are planned to be located in areas classified by the government as suffering from water shortages or stress. State-owned power company NTPC, which already gets 98.5% of its water from water-stressed regions, is involved in nine of these projects.
Water once a week
An example of this problem is the Solapur district in western India, where after the launch of a 1320 MW coal-fired power plant in 2017, local residents began receiving water once a week, instead of every other day as before. Resident Rajani Thoke has to plan her life around the water supply:
“On days with supply, I don’t focus on anything else but storing water and doing laundry.”
Experts explain that the choice of locations for power plants is determined primarily by the availability of land, not water. India’s complicated land laws have delayed commercial projects for years, so energy companies, under pressure from growing demand, are choosing areas with minimal public resistance.
“They are looking for areas with easy access to land, even if water is only available far away,”
– explains Prof. Rudrodip Majumdar of the National Institute of Advanced Study.
Without water, there is no electricity
Water shortages are already affecting the operation of existing power plants. Since 2014, India has lost 60.33 billion kWh of coal-fired generation due to water shortages – the equivalent of 19 days of full coal supply at June 2025 levels. The 2,920 MW Chandrapur power plant regularly shuts down several units for months at a time during the dry season.
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Despite the problems, the expansion of coal-fired power continues. The Chandrapur power plant plans to add another 800 MW of capacity, although the source of water for the expansion has not yet been identified. Similarly, the dismantling of 420 MW of old, inefficient units has been delayed by seven years due to government instructions not to close thermal power plants by the end of the decade.
People are not important
Conflict between industry and residents is already becoming a reality. In 2017, during a drought, local residents protested against a power plant in Chandrapur, forcing officials to divert water to residential areas. Anjali is forced to walk to a tap installed by the power plant at her gate to get drinking water:
“We are poor, we are content with what we can get.”
Indian power plants consume twice as much water as their global counterparts, according to the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment. This puts additional pressure on water resources at a time when demand for irrigation in areas such as Solapur exceeds supply by a third.
Energy officials recognize the dilemma but emphasize the strategic importance of energy security. Former chief energy bureaucrat Ram Vinay Shahi emphasizes:
“The only energy resource we have in the country is coal. Between water and coal, coal is preferred.”
This position reflects the difficult choice between short-term energy needs and long-term environmental sustainability in the face of growing water scarcity. And this choice is clearly not in favor of ordinary poor people.
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