The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Engineers India Limited (EIL), a Navratna company, to develop Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects in cities with a population of million plus. In the presence of Mr. Manoj Joshi, Secretary, MoHUA and Ms. Vartika Shukla, C&MD, EIL, the MoU was signed by Ms. Roopa Mishra, Joint Secretary, SBM-U & Mission Director, MoHUA and Mr. R.K. Rathi, Executive Director, EIL.

The thrust on sustainable solid waste management has been strengthened under the ambit of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, with the overall vision of creating garbage-free cities. Focusing on this objective, MoHUA has decided to set up large-scale solid waste processing facilities in million plus cities. There are 59 million plus cities in India like Lucknow, Kanpur, Bareilly, Nasik, Thane, Nagpur, Gwalior, Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore to name a few. For management of organic/wet fraction of municipal solid waste, bio-methanation plants have been proposed in these million plus cities.

Waste to Energy plants use dry waste fraction of municipal solid waste and produce renewable power with maximum reduction of waste volume utilizing least space in execution in compliance with SWM Rules 2016 and fulfill all the statutory norms of environment protection. Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects will integrate the concept of circularity in waste management by producing green energy from dry and wet waste component of municipal solid waste. The by-product such as electricity and Bio-CNG will also help in achieving sustainability of waste management operations.

EIL shall assist and handhold the million plus cities in developing such projects for larger quantum of waste integrating circularity in waste management. In the first phase, 25 million plus cities will be selected for developing large-scale process plants. The success of these projects will be pivotal as it will be conceptualized and executed as bench-marking for such projects. Thus, collaboration for providing support in preliminary technical assessment and Transaction Advisory services from EIL will have significant impact. EIL shall subsequently handhold ULBs in carrying out monitoring process of these PPP projects during the construction phase and shall assist in obtaining statutory approvals. The initiative will result in additional processing capacity of 15,000 TPD for Bio-Methanation and 10,000 TPD for Waste to Energy respectively.