Bangalore, February 23:

A stream of protests has hit India’s ministry of new and rene-wable energy (MNRE) for sanctioning municipal waste-to-energy (MWTE) projects that are collapsing under an avala-nche of incombustible wastes.

“The technology of converting waste to energy from purely organic wastes through bio-methanation is working successfully in many small, private projects in India. But our city municipalities are indifferent to segregation and hence unable to provide sufficient combustible matter,’’ says Almitra Patel who heads a committee on solid waste appointed by India’s Supreme Court in 2000. Patel, an engineer with a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was handed the job against a petition she made on the lack of measures taken by municipalities to dispose garbage safely.

According to her, Indian garbage contains more moisture and construction debris than ‘western garbage’ and is therefore better suited to composting, which provides multiple benefits and is a cheaper alternative on the current land-space being used for infrastructure-intensive and exorbitant foreign projects.

“The Indian taxpayer is already hugely burdened by government grants given to such inherently uneconomic waste-to-electricity schemes,” said Patel. “The grant amount itself is enough to set up at least double the amount of compost sites.” The MNRE grants approximately $340,000 to $680,000 per MW of renewable energy as incentive to industry, attracting several foreign and national companies.

The Washington-based Global Environment Facility provided $5.5 million in 1994, used mainly for consultancies and technologies, in promoting waste-to-energy projects. Several western countries are now encouraging their industries to set up municipal waste-to-energy plants in India.

In 1985, the New Delhi municipality spent between 4.5 million to $9.96 million employing Danish firm Volund Milijontecknik in the Timarpur area for a waste-to-energy plant which collapsed in 21 days due to the machinery’s inability to handle the high content of sand and debris.

Timarpur has yet again become controversial with an Indian investment bank, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd, setting up the Timarpur Waste Management Company to generate six MW of electricity through biomass gasification with a 20 per cent grant, and two others in southern Andhra Pradesh state. Both plants have reportedly recently shut down.

Delhi-based Gopal Krishna of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives says the project is now incorrectly trying to earn carbon credits through the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. “As per the Kyoto Protocol itself, waste incineration is a greenhouse gas emitter,” he says.

In Lucknow a 5-MW waste-to-energy project designed to handle 200-300 tonnes of municipal waste per day, set up at a cost of $18 million, besides a government subsidy of $3.3 mi-llion ‘has literally failed.”