The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs(MoHUA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with Engineers India Limited(EIL) to develop Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects in cities with a population of million plus(million plus cities). This MoU is in line with India’s Green Growth Agenda.
Signatories:
Roopa Mishra, Joint Secretary, Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban (SBM-U) & Mission Director, MoHUA and R.K. Rathi, Executive Director, EIL signed the MoU in the presence of Manoj Joshi, Secretary, MoHUA and Vartika Shukla, Chairman and Managing Director (C&MD), EIL.
Features of the MoU:
i.Under this MoU, EIL will assist and handhold the million plus cities in developing such projects for larger quantum of waste integrating circularity in waste management.
ii.In the 1st phase, 25 million plus cities will be selected for developing large-scale process plants.
iii.EIL will also handhold Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to monitor the process of these Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects during the construction phase and will assist in obtaining statutory approvals.
iv.These projects will result in additional processing capacity of 15,000 TPD for Bio-Methanation and 10,000 TPD for Waste to Energy.
Background:
The Union budget 2023-2024 presented by Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs designated Green Growth as one of the 7 priorities (Saptarishi) of the Union Budget 2023-2024.
- In the ‘Green Growth’ segment, 500 new Waste to Wealth plants will be established under the Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan (GOBAR-DHAN) scheme for promoting circular economy.
- This will include, 200 compressed biogas (CBG) plants, 75 in urban areas, 300 community or cluster-based plants, at a total investment of Rs 10,000 crore.
Note:
The 7 priorities are: inclusive development, reaching the last mile, infrastructure and investment, unleashing the potential, green growth, youth power and financial sector
Key Points:
i.The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM- U) 2.0 has strengthened the efforts towards sustainable solid waste management, with an overall vision of creating garbage free cities.
ii.The MoHUA has set up a large scale solid waste processing facilities in cities with more than million people.
iii.In India there are around 59 million plus cities which includes Lucknow, Kanpur, Bareilly, Nasik, Thane, Nagpur, Gwalior, Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore.
iv.For management of organic/wet fraction of municipal solid waste bio-methanation plants have been proposed in these million plus cities
Waste to Energy plants:
i.Waste to Energy plants utilises the dry waste from municipal solid waste and produce renewable power with maximum reduction of waste volume with least space in execution in compliance with Solid Waste Management(SWM) Rules 2016 and meet all the statutory norms of environment protection.
ii.The by-products of these projects, such as electricity and Bio-CNG, will help in achieving sustainability of waste management operations.
Additional info:
In February 2022, Prime Minister(PM) Narendra Modi inaugurated the Asia’s biggest municipal solid waste based GOBARdhan plant in Indore, Madhya Pradesh(MP) to generate 19,000 kg bio-Compressed natural gas(CNG).
About Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs(MoHUA):
Union Minister– Hardeep Singh Puri(Rajya Sabha- Uttar Pradesh)
Minister of State– Kaushal Kishore (Constituency- Mohanlalganj, Uttar Pradesh)
