Cement, Energy and Environment

suffer a lot," says Mural i Krishna, Chairperson, Village Vision India, an energy services consultancy. Krishna believes that, "Either the subsidy should be increased or there should be higher prices for power I gas." A higher selling price of gas/power will assure financial viability for projects and bankers will come forward to finance them. The government should offer such price support until the developer breaks-even , Krishna says. For the New Delhi's Okhla waste-to-energy project, tariff was fixed at Rs 2.49 per kWh for the first year and from second year onwards the developer was sanctioned Rs 2.83 per kWh.13 But says Ashok Mandai, CEO of Jindal Ecopolis , which runs the Okhla project, "When the Okhla project was conceived, its operation costs were estimated to be Rs 2.51 per kWh. But the current operat ing cost is Rs 7 per kWh. The assumptions were wrong. We get more material that is unfit for incineration." He also adds that "The costs that were assumed to set the tariff were extremely modest when the project was conceived compared to what we eventually incurred. Capital costs of the plant were assumed to be about Rs 170 crore. However, with cost of technology rising during the project's implementation period , expenses shot up to about Rs 270 crores ." The company had counted on the sale of carbon credits, which were about 15 Euros per tonne of C0 2 in 2008. However, the prices have come down to less than a Euro of late. "On top of that , the central nodal agency for the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) market is also unsure if we should be counted as renewable energy suppliers. We have registered for the REC mechanism, but we are yet to be accredited . We are also yet to receive the Rs 10 crore subsidy under the MNRE programme, even though it has been three years since the plant has been commissioned," he adds. Krishna of Village Voice advocates a generation based incentive and argues that tariff be fixed on a case-to-case basis . He also calls on the ministry of agricul ture to extend subsidies to biogas slurry based fertilizers. "All agriculture and horticulture departments should buy organic fertil izers from the biogas producers. This will not cost the exchequer extra as there are several subsidies for organic ferti lizers, such as vermi compost and synthetic ferti lizers. Biogas slurry based fert il izers from waste-to-energy plants should also be brought under the same scheme," he adds. Mandai of Jindal Ecopol is bel ieves that municipalities must pay waste management charges to MSW projects to make them financially viable. Presently, depending on the municipali ty, wastes are either delivered free of cost or for a smal l price from the developers. In many developed countries, municipalities pay waste management charges to the developers to manage as well as to recover energy from these wastes (See box: Tipping fee in Sweden and the US). II. The necessity of segregation Municipal solid waste can come from residential, commercial and institutional sources. These wastes include food wastes, paper, cardboard, plastics, texti les, leather, wood, glass , metals, ashes, bulky items such as consumer electronics, white goods, batteries, oil, tires , hazardous wastes from households such as paints, cleaning agents, waste containing mercury and motor oil , and e-wastes such as computers, phones and TVs. Debris from construction sites are also found in municipal solid wastes. In India, MSW is not segregated in an organized and scientific manner. This waste should be properly segregated for the smooth functioning of waste-to-energy plants. Firstly, when plast ics and chlorinated compound find their way to boilers of waste-to-energy plants they release dioxins, furans and hydrogen chloride which are toxic to the environment. Secondly, segregating materials unfit for burning-bricks, stone, glass, ceramic pieces, leather and rubber-imposes burden on plants, who have to send these rejects to landfills. More than five years have passed since the CAG report and three years have passed since MoEF identified the core issues related to inefficient waste management. But CPCB and MoEF have not initiated much action regarding data collection and capacity building . Local municipal corporations are also yet to respond. Sorting non-industrial waste is largely in the hands of the unorganized sector. The rag pickers seeking recyclables for their livelihood, tend to segregate only those materials which fetch them good returns in the recycling market. This means waste-to-energy plants get badly segregated feedstock making it very difficult for energy developers to assess accurately the financial viabili ty of their projects. More importantly, unsegregated waste puts a question mark over the technical feasibility of waste-to– energy plants in the long run. 48