The state government plans to offer the waste collection services for free, while the cow dung procurement will actually be a paid initiative that will help increase the income of the farmers in nearby villages.<\/p>\n
To make this happen, the government is planning to equip over 1600 municipalities with material management facilities, to make it easy to recycle organic waste and end the spread of single-use plastics.<\/p>\n
All the collected waste will be sent to this plant, where over 550 tons of wet waste will be processed every day and converted into 19,000 kg of usable bio-CNG. In addition, the process will also generate 100 tons of high-quality compost every day, which will be circulated back to the farmers to further reduce their expenses.<\/p>\n
The state government already plans to buy half of the usable bio-CNG at a price of Rs.5 per kg, to help power over 400 city buses. This will not only reduce the fuel required to run the transport system but also cut down on the operational costs as well.<\/p>\n
![\"bio-cng](\"https:\/\/www.renewable-india.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/rscs1e4_biocng-plant-mpindoreasias-biggestndtv_625x300_18_February_22.webp\")
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Picture Credit: NDTV<\/p>\n
The rest will be sold to various industries as an energy source, currently fixed at a rate of Rs 77 per kg. Thus, accomplishing the zero-landfill model that the government aims to adopt with such ventures.<\/p>\n
While the raw material is being collected and transported by the government itself, the building and operations of this plant are the responsibility of a private company, called\u00a0Indo-Enviro Integrated Solutions Ltd. They entered this deal on a public-private partnership (PPP) model and put up over Rs 150 crore for the construction of the project.<\/p>\n
This gives them the right to produce and sell the bio-CNG created in this plant. At the same time, they will also be paying the Indore Municipal Corporation\u00a0over Rs 2.5 crore per annum, for the next 20 years, for their waste collection services.<\/p>\n
Even at current capacity, this single plant will help mitigate over 1,30,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, by diverting it into renewable energy. This makes this a win-win-win scenario for all parties involved.<\/p>\n
The government also recognizes the benefits of such ventures, which is why they are planning to set up over 75 such bio-CNG plants in the next 2 years. This will help drastically change the energy landscape of the nation, as well as help as reduce toxic air pollution that happens when all this organic waste is dumped untreated into such landfills, thus, resulting in the release of landfill biogas and various other pollutants.<\/p>\n
The best thing about this model is that we have barely tapped the energy potential of biogas, with the current installed capacity only utilizing about 2.5% of the total potential CNG that could be extracted from all the organic waste we generate each year.<\/p>\n
Even if we only focus on just the agricultural residue and livestock dung that is generated in our country. That still comes out to over 75 billion cu.m a year. This roughly translates to over 80,000 tons of Bio-CNG per day. By diverting all that waste to plants like this, we can easily meet the dream of doubling farmers’ income in the coming future, while also helping India reach its goal of being net carbon neutral by 2070.<\/p>\n