MoHUA signs MoU to develop Waste to Wealth plants in million plus cities.

• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and Engineers India Limited (EIL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to build waste-to-energy and bio-methanation projects in million plus cities as part of India’s “Green Growth” agenda.
• Focusing on this objective, MoHUA has decided to set up large-scale solid waste processing facilities in million plus cities.
  • There are 59 million plus cities in India like Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Nasik, Thane, Nagpur, Gwalior, Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore to name a few.These cities are home to nearly 600 million people, which is approximately half of India’s urban population.
• In the first phase, 25 million plus cities will be selected for developing large-scale process plants.
• EIL will assist and handhold the million plus cities in developing such projects for larger quantum of waste integrating circularity in waste management.
• The collaboration for providing support in preliminary technical assessment and Transaction Advisory services from EIL will have significant impact on waste management. EIL will also handhold ULBs in carrying out monitoring processes of these PPP projects during the construction phase and will assist in obtaining statutory approvals. “The initiative will result in an additional processing capacity of 15,000 tonnes per day (TPD) for Bio-Methanation and 10,000 TPD for Waste to Energy respectively” according to MoHUA.
• Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects will integrate the concept of circularity in waste management by producing green energy from dry and wet waste components of municipal solid waste.
  • The by-products such as electricity and Bio-CNG will also help in achieving sustainability of waste management operations.
• Bio-methanation is anaerobic digestion of organic materials which is converted into biogas, containing mostly methane (-60%), and carbon dioxide (-40%). > In addition to this, WTE uses technologies like incineration, gasification and pyrolysis.
• Under the ‘Green Growth’ segment of Union Budget 2023-24, 500 new Waste to Wealth plants will be established under the GOBARdhan scheme.

About GOBAR (Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources)-dhan scheme

• It is being implemented as part of Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) under Ministry of Drinking water and Sanitation.
• It focuses on managing and converting cattle dung and solid waste on farms into compost, biogas, and bio-CNG.
• Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 also aims at creating garbage-free cities and has provisions for bio-methanation plants linked to GOBARdhan and SATAT schemes.
  • Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) initiative envisages setting up of 5000 Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants for production of 15 Million Metric Ton (MMT) per annum of CBG by 2023-24.
    • It has been launched in 2018 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.