Transcript India ITES BPO Consortium

Waste to Energy (WTE)
~
Is it the solution to India’s
waste problem?
Umesh K Baveja
B.Tech, MBA
December 2004, Bangalore
WTE in India ~ Background
• First ambitious program to encourage WTE
launched in 1995
– To demonstrate that WTE is possible
– Long-term target of producing 1700MW of energy from
priority waste streams
– Operated under the aegis of National BioEnergy Board
(NBB), Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES)
– Has an elevated status due to the contribution to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and in encouraging the
integration of “best practice” waste collection and transfer
to Energy
– 16 cost sharing projects ~ usage of Bio-methanation
– To establish a fiscal and financial regime necessary for WTE
Energy from Waste
• Potential of Power Generation in India from Waste
Urban and Municipal Wastes
:
1000 MW
Industrial Wastes
(Dairy, Distillery, Press Mud, Tannery,
Pulp and Paper and Food Processing
Industries)
:
700 MW
TOTAL
:
1700 MW
• Common perception – WTE is most applicable to India
- Reduces waste by 60 - 90%
- Recovers resources
- Aids safe disposal of waste – avoids pollution of land, water
and air
- Reduces Greenhouse gases
 But, is WTE the solution for India’s waste
problem?
Physical Characteristics of typical
MSW in India
Contents
Available in %
Paper
4.68
Plastics
0.71
Metals
0.64
Glass
0.45
Ash and Fine Earth
40.03
Total Compostable matter
38.75
Chemical Characteristics of typical
MSW in India
Characteristics
% availability
Moisture content
25.2
Organic matter
23.4
Carbon
13.08
Nitrogen
0.58
P as P2O5
0.66
K as K2O
0.70
Composition of urban solid waste
in Indian cities
Is WTE the answer to India’s
waste problem? (1)
• Indian waste unsuitable for production of
energy
– 80% of the waste in India is organic and moist
– Have low Calorific value (800 - 1,050 Kilo calories
per kilogram)
– Experience in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai (see
notes page)
• WTE technologies are regarded as “unused,
suspect” technologies
– WTE tech introduced in India so far are NOT
based on a world-wide tried and tested model
– Technologies like bio-methanation, incineration,
combustion etc have toxic by-products that cause
serious environmental problems like Acid rain, fog
 WTE technologies / projects are environment unfriendly
Is WTE the answer to India’s waste
problem? (2)
– Cost of a typical 5MW WTE plant ~ Rs 40 crores
– Consumption ~ 150 tons of urban waste for each MW
of electricity
Which is an investment of Rs 8 crore per MW ie, FOUR
times cost of conventional Thermal power!!
+
And, the subsidy exceeds 50% of total project cost!
Which is …
An unjustifiable public investment of Rs 20 crore for
800 tonnes of urban waste disposal! And a cost that
should be borne specifically by the waste generator
 WTE projects are economically unviable in India
WTE Projects in Maharashtra
Municipal
Corporation
Municipal Council of
Greater Mumbai
Promoter
Capacity
a) MSW Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai
b) Waste Management Ind.
Ltd, Mumbai
c) EDL India Ltd, New Delhi
14.98 MW
10.0 MW
Kalyan Dombivali
Municipal Corp
Not Finalised
5.52 MW
Pimpri-Chinchwad
Municipal Corpn
Soundcraft Indus, Mumbai
3.9 MW
TOTAL
21.0 MW
51.88 MW
WTE plant ~ Lucknow
• 5 MW Power Generation Project for MSW
– Promoter
• Asia Bio-Energy (A consortium of companies in
Austria,Germany, Singapore and India)
– Technology
• BIMA (Biogas tech) from Austria plus some equipment
from Germany
– Capacity
• 5.0 MW (nett), 5.6 MW (gross) power, 80 TPD manure
– Input waste
• About 500 TPD
– Project cost
• Rs 73 crore
WTE plant ~ Lucknow
WTE ~ major processes
involved
• Pre-treatment: Removal of inerts / inorganic / nonbiodegradable matter and homo-genisation of feedstock
• Energy Recovery:
Anaerobic Digestion /
Gasification / Combustion
• Post-Treatment: Stabilisation of treated / processed
material for final disposal / utilisation
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (1)
• Incineration is the most costly discard
management option
– Incinerators are at least two times more expensive
than landfills
Capital costs of incineration v/s recycling and composting
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (2)
• Incinerators contribute to countries'
indebtedness
– In the US, on a per ton basis, sorting and
processing recyclables alone sustains 11 times
more jobs than incineration
• Incinerators are capital-intensive rather than
labor-intensive
– While Recycling / Composting is more laborintensive than capital-intensive
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (3)
• Wet organic materials, common in a country
like India, may reduce the capacity of or shut
down incinerators
– In 1986 in Delhi, an incinerator was closed within
a week after its completion because the garbage
from the surrounding communities was too wet to
burn. The facility cost more than US$10 million to
build!!
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (4)
• Incineration will adversely impact the informal
sector and the informal sector will diversely
impact incineration
– Incinerators will impose hardships on if not
jeopardize waste pickers’ livelihoods
• Energy revenues from incinerators are often
over-estimated
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (5)
• Incinerators may require transfer stations,
which is an additional cost
• Pollution control equipment and pollution
regulation and enforcement are expensive and
increase costs
– Incinerators are major contributors to air
pollution
– release pollutants such as dioxins, heavy metals,
oxides of nitrogen, sulfur oxides, particulate
matter, and numerous volatile organic compounds
into the atmosphere
– Neither high temperatures nor pollution control
equipment can make incinerators safe
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (6)
• Incinerators produce a toxic ash that requires
disposal in engineered landfills, significantly
adding to costs
– Ash management poses severe environmental
and economic problems
• Incinerators often receive far less tonnage
than they were designed to process, leading to
financial problems
– Example ~ Montgomery County, Maryland, US
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (7)
• Lack of infrastructure in lesser industrialized
countries may doom incinerators to financial
failure
• Citizens and taxpayers pay for incinerators'
financial problems
– Construction of incinerators generally ties
governments into long-term contracts
guaranteeing delivery of waste tonnage to the
facilities at a specified fee (these fees usually
escalate as time passes)
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (8)
• Incinerators hamper least-cost options such as
recycling
– Materials commonly burned in incinerators such
as paper, garden discards, and some plastics have
a much higher value when used as raw materials
than when used as fuel
• Incineration consultants and "experts" can add
millions to the costs
Incineration is a losing
Financial proposition for all (9)
• Incineration's high
investment costs
increase potential
for corruption
• Incinerators not
only put the
livelihoods of waste
pickers at risk, but
they also reduce
overall employment
and business
opportunities from
reuse and recycling
Job creation in the US from reuse
and recycling versus disposal
Incineration is a losing Financial
proposition for all (10)
• Incineration has high public health costs
– Numerous studies have reported increased
incidence of cancers, respiratory ailments, and
congenital birth defects among residents residing
near incinerators
• Incineration wastes resources and energy
– If the United States burned all its municipal waste
it would contribute less than 1% of the country’s
energy needs (Source: Dr. Paul Connett, “Municipal Waste Incineration: A Poor
Solution for the Twenty First Century”)
Incineration is a losing Financial
proposition for all (10)
• Incinerators lower property values
– truck traffic, blowing trash, birds and rats
attracted to trash, noise, odor, and pollution
caused by incinerators can all contribute to a drop
in property values
• Incineration encourages continued waste
generation, diverts attention from real clean
production and zero waste solutions, and
reinforces the notion that unwanted discards
are a local community responsibility and cost
In summary,
three to five times more
energy can be saved by recycling
materials than by burning them!!
So, what are the alternatives?
Recycling
Composting
The Alternatives ~ Examples (1)
• Mumbai
– A neighborhood participating in the Advanced
Locality Management program in Andheri,
Mumbai reduced its garbage disposal by half
within two years (source: Shiv Kumar, “Mumbaiites resort to self-help to
tackle civic issues,” India Abroad News Service, June 5, 2000)
• Chennai
– A community-based organization, Exnora
International, has developed a decentralized
recycling / composting approach that has the
potential to divert 90% of municipal discards
 High waste prevention and diversion levels are
possible and cost-effective
The Alternatives ~ Examples (2)
• Pune
– Municipal government granted adult waste pickers
authority to collect recyclable scrap by endorsing
photo identification membership cards for a newly
formed waste picker collective
– Further promoted public awareness of a new
discards segregation system in which the waste
pickers collect, at curbside, segregated organic
and recyclable materials
– Households pay a mandatory fee to the waste
pickers in return for this service. This program
has benefited everyone involved (source: Poornima Chikarmane
and Lakshmi Narayan, “Formalising Livelihood: Case of Wastepickers in Pune,” Economic and
Political Weekly, October 7, 2000)
 Collecting segregated recyclables and
organics for composting
The Alternatives ~ Examples (3)
• Patna
– Provides little door-to-door waste collection, and
does not operate any composting facilities or
sanitary landfills
– Some of the apartment dwellers have created an
innovative way to handle their organic discards
using their balconies and window sills
– Residents combine organic waste, soil, floor
sweepings, and dried moss from roof tops in clay
pots. The mixture matures into compost in three
to four months. Residents use the finished
compost to grow flowers, ornamental plants,
spinach, and tomatoes (source: I. Maumdar, “India,” Warmer Bulletin,
Number 34, August 1999, p. 3.)
 Vermicomposting
Chennai ~ Incineration vs
Recycling approach
The key to healthy communities is to
redirect the
millions of dollars in investments slated for
incineration systems into
and
reduction
that
and
waste prevention
zero waste systems
maximize
on investments
and
both
return
economic
development opportunities