Very recently, two key ministries – power and new & renewable energy – jointly launched a national mission to swiftly identify emerging technologies in the power sector and develop them indigenously, at scale, for deployment within and outside India.

By identifying emerging technologies and taking them to the implementation stage, the mission – named “Mission on Advanced and High-Impact Research (MAHIR)” — seeks to leverage them as the main fuel for future economic growth.

Eight initial areas have been identified, one of which is development of cold rolled grain oriented (CRGO) steel, commonly referred to as electrical steel, or simply CRGO —a critical raw material in the manufacture of transformers, in turn, a vital component of the power T&D value chain.

India has had a very tough time with CRGO. The country has tried to create domestic capabilities for CRGO production but a tangible outcome has eluded India for over five decades.

Currently, there is only one domestic manufacturer of CRGO. This is the Indian arm of a global company and has local manufacturing capacity of around 50,000 tonnes per year. India’s annual CRGO demand is an estimated 300,000 tonnes, which is around 9 per cent of the total global demand.

Admittedly, CRGO is a very sophisticated material and there are not more than a dozen manufacturers worldwide that are fulfilling the global demand. Technology for CRGO production is very complex and therefore, fiercely guarded. Collaborations are just not easy to come by. Little surprise therefore that India, which has massive steel-making capacity – both in the private and public sector – has come nowhere close to crediting itself with self-sufficient domestic production of CRGO.

CRGO has been a contentious issue on another count as well. There is never-ending debate on the use of CRGO recycled from scrapped transformers. Opinions are divided. While one section of the industry believes that CRGO is a non-ageing material that can be reused, there is a countervailing body of opinion that feels that Indian transformer manufacturers are indulging in the willful use of scrap (inferior) CRGO in commercial interest.

To check the entry of inferior CRGO into the Indian transformer industry, the government, some years ago, mandated foreign suppliers to have their products “BIS” marked. While most or all foreign suppliers have complied, one can never be fully sure of its impact it has had on stemming the inflow of inferior CRGO.

It is high time that CRGO gets serious attention at the policy and implementation levels. The criticality of CRGO for a country that is rapidly expanding its power transmission infrastructure cannot be understated. Including CRGO in the initial list under “Mission on Advanced and High-Impact Research” is a laudable first step, which should however be matched by expeditious implementation and tangible positive results.