Aafrin Kidwai 
An MoU was signed between MoHUA and EIL
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Engineers India Limited to develop Waste to Energy (WTE) and bio-methanation projects in cities with a population of million plus. 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, and Coimbatore to name a few. For the management of organic/wet fraction of municipal solid waste, bio-methanation plants have been proposed in these million-plus cities.
In February 2022, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated Asia’s biggest municipal solid waste-based GOBARdhan plant in Indore aiming to generate 19,000 kg of bio-CNG gas. Under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, the bio-methanation plants linked to the GOBARdhan and SATAT schemes will produce Bio-CNG as renewable energy.
EIL will assist and handhold the million-plus cities in developing such projects. In the first phase, 25 million plus cities will be selected for growing large-scale process plants. The success of these projects will be pivotal as they will be conceptualized and executed as bench-marking for such projects. Thus, collaboration for supporting preliminary technical assessment and Transaction Advisory services from EIL will have a significant impact. EIL will also handhold ULBs in carrying out the monitoring process of these PPP projects during the construction phase and will assist in obtaining statutory approvals. The initiative will result in an additional processing capacity of 15,000 TPD for bio-Methanation and 10,000 TPD for WTE respectively.
Disclaimer: This article is taken from a press release issued by PIB.
