India Country Report

India is located in South Asia and has a land area of 2973 thousand square kilometres. It had a population of around 850 million in 1990 which grew at an annual average rate of 1.6 percent per year to reach 1155 million in 2009. India’s GDP increased at an average annual rate of 6.3 percent from US$271 billion in 1990 to US$867 billion in 2009. The services and industrial sectors are the largest contributors to India’s GDP. India’s total primary energy consumption was 512 Mtoe in 2009. In 2009, coal represented the largest share of primary energy at 55.8 percent, followed by oil at 31.2 percent. Coal is mainly consumed for power generation and by industry. The remaining shares were: natural gas (9.6 percent), hydro (1.8 percent), nuclear (0.9 percent) and others (0.8 percent). Compared with 1990, the share of coal and oil decreased marginally. Conversely, the share of natural gas increased. India generated almost 900TWh of electricity in 2009. The annual average growth in electricity generation between 1990 and 2009 was almost as high as growth in GDP. The share of generation from coal in 2009 amounted to 68.5 percent, natural gas (12.4 percent), hydro (11.9 percent), oil (2.9 percent), nuclear (2.1 percent) and others (2.2 percent).