The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Engineers India (EIL) to develop waste-to-energy and bio-methanation projects in cities with million-plus population, in alignment with the ‘Green Growth’ goals.
Budget 2023-2024 focuses on deployment of 500 new waste-to-wealth plants under the GOBARdhan scheme with an investment size of Rs. 10,000 crore.
EIL will extend support for preliminary technical assessment and transaction advisory services to these cities in executing waste management which integrates the circular economy approach.
In the first phase, cities with 25 million-plus population will be selected for developing large-scale process plants. Moreover, the success rate will serve to benchmark the outcomes in the next phase and future projects.
Some of the cities in the 59 million-plus category includes Lucknow, Kanpur, Bareilly, Nasik, Thane, Nagpur, Gwalior, Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore.
EIL will also assist urban local bodies (ULBs) in the monitoring process of these PPP projects during the construction phase, apart from securing the statutory approvals.
The move is expected to deliver additional processing capacity of 15,000 tpd for bio-methanation and 10,000 tpd for waste-to-energy projects respectively. Both projects aim at maximum reduction of waste volume while utilizing the least space in execution to produce renewable power in compliance with Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM), 2016.
