Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s proposal to
encourage municipalities to go in for waste-to-energy projects has come
as a shot in the arm for the Coimbatore Corporation.

In
his Budget speech on Thursday, the Minister said: “India tosses out
several thousand tonnes of garbage each day. We will evolve a scheme to
encourage cities and municipalities to take up waste-to-energy projects
in PPP mode, which would be neutral to different technologies. I propose
to support municipalities that will implement waste-to-energy projects
through different instruments such as viability gap funding, repayable
grant and low cost capital.”

According to sources in
the Coimbatore Corporation the announcement has come at a time when the
civic body has been planning a waste-to-energy plant at the waste
management yard in Vellalore. The agency in charge of processing the
waste, Coimbatore Integrated Waste Management Limited, is planning the
plant and has begun preliminary works.

Sources say
that the agency after assessing the refuse-derived fuel will go in for a
plant to generate it. The fuel is the shredded and dehydrated solid
waste. It has identified a Japanese agency with which it will enter into
an agreement for the gasification technology.

The
agency has submitted a proposal in this regard to the Corporation, the
sources say and add that the proposal is for processing 150 tonnes a
day. The Corporation collects and manages around 800 tonnes a day.

Aside
from this, the civic body is also planning another waste-to-energy
project under ‘Shunya,’ the zero waste management project that is funded
by international agencies.

The sources say that in
Ward 23 – the ward where the Corporation will implement Shunya on a
trial basis – it proposes to set up a gasifier plant to generate
electricity from the organic waste collected in the ward.

Another
waste-to-energy project that the Corporation has proposed is power
generation from the proposed sewage treatment plant in Ondipudur. With a
slight modification in design, the Corporation hoped to generate
electricity, the then Commissioner T.K. Ponnusamy had said.

The
sources say that with the Corporation proposing all these projects on
the public-private partnership mode, it was happy with the Minister’s
announcement.

The city’s civic activists have also
welcomed the announcement. R. Raveendran of the Residents’ Awareness
Association of Coimbatore says that the Corporation should grab the
opportunity for two reasons: one, it will help in better waste
management, and, two, it will also bring down Corporation’s expenditure
towards power.

He suggests that the Corporation can
tie-up with hoteliers association or fruit merchants’ association for a
constant supply of organic waste to fuel the plants.