BHUBANESWAR: Aligning with Delhi’s waste-to-energy concept, the Odisha government is considering to explore the possibility of generating power from municipal waste for effective handling of solid waste in major urban areas of the state.
This was informed by Housing and Urban Development minister Krushna Chandra Mahapatra on Saturday. After visiting the state-of-the-art waste-to-energy plant at Okhla, managed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Mahapatra said such an initiative could play an important role in addressing waste management challenges while contributing to clean energy generation in Odisha.
“The concept would be considered seriously for implementation to promote sustainable waste management practices in our state,” he added.
The Okhla plant processes around 2,000 tonne of municipal solid waste daily and generates approximately 23 megawatt (MW) of green energy. The minister held a detailed discussion with the civic officials of Delhi on functioning of the plant, technology used and operational practices that could be replicated. He also enquired about their plan of expanding the facility’s capacity to 3,000 tonne to generate 30 MW of energy in the future.
Odisha at present, generates about 1,847 tonne per day (TPD) solid waste apart from hundreds of tonnes of wet waste. This apart, it has 83 large dumping sites spread across the urban areas where around 24 lakh tonne of legacy waste are yet to be remediated.
Considering the large-scale generation of waste, the state government has already asked the H&UD department to look into the establishment of integrated waste processing complexes in municipal corporations and larger municipalities. These complexes will have all types of processing plants including compressed biogas plants for easy disposal of waste and reduction of transportation and infrastructure costs. H&UD officials said establishment of waste-to-energy plant could also play a significant role in addressing the waste handling crisis in major urban areas of the state.