Coal plants worldwide are grappling with low-capacity utilization levels and environmental issues; and have not only become unprofitable to utilities, but also uneconomical to customers. Developed countries with significant coal capacities such as Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK),and the United States (US), are taking different approaches to wean away from coal. One such approach includes retiring (i.e., decommissioning) and repurposing coal plants for various productive end uses, including solar plants (e.g., Nanticoke, Canada), wind plants (e.g., Brayton Point, US), data centers (e.g., Widows Creek, US), and energy storage (e.g., Liddell, Australia).

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Developing countries may gain much from the experience of their developed counterparts. Against this backdrop, we briefly examine the power situation in three developing countries, namely, South Africa,Chile, and India, based on their economic prowess within respective regions, predominance of coal in economic activities, and vulnerability to climate change, which make an interesting case for an analysis of repurposing coal plants in developing countries.

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While retiring and repurposing coal plants may seem beneficial, it may encounter resistance for a fewr easons, such as costs involved, identification of plants, impact on communities, and other system flexibility considerations. These retirements can be better rationalized with a clear empirical estimation of costs and benefits incurred in decommissioning plants compared with repurposing them. In view of the significant climate change benefits, there is also a case to deploy climate finance for enabling a few kickstart projects in developing countries to incentivize utilities to decommission and repurpose plants before the end of their economic lives.

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Our study presents the concepts and components of a cost-benefit analysis needed for a coal plant repurposing project. We have illustrated these concepts using the example of a representative coal plant(of 1,000 megawatt [MW] capacity) in India. An existing coal plant site may have many alternative usages including continued use for energy generation. There are, in fact, several possible alternatives within energy, including alternative renewable, storage, and ancillary services technologies that can be deployed.Renewable power generation may, for instance, include solar photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, wind, biomass, and so forth. Storage options may range from battery and thermal storage to pumped storage hydropower for pit head plants. Ancillary services may be provided by the repurposed plant through battery storage or a synchronous condenser (SynCON). Costs and benefits from repurposing would differ across technology choices.