Uttarakhand to generate electricity from waste

The Uttarakhand government has decided to convert waste generated in the state to electricity under an initiative titled ‘Waste to Energy’. The government is ready with the draft and the chief minister would hold a meeting regarding it soon.
The hill state is said to produce about 900-tonnes of waste everyday. Out of which half is organic in nature while 17 per cent falls in a recyclable category followed by 21 per cent biomedical waste and 11 per cent of inert nature. The above amount of waste is speculated to generate 5 megawatts of electricity and the scheme also aims to solve the problem of unavailability of land fills to dispose of waste across the state.
Earlier, in January this year, Dehradun city featured as almost 11 times more polluted than prescribed standards of World Health Organization standards and worse than Kanpur according to a Greenpeace report. That is why Last month, UEPPCB approved the state fuel policy to reduce air pollution in the coming years including ban on the use of petroleum coke as fuel in a few years, which has a large-scale impact on air pollution. Petroleum coke also known as petcoke is a final solid by-product that derives from the oil refining process and is very rich in carbon. Given its high carbon content, it contributes more pollution, greenhouse gases. According to a meeting that was held in second week of June the government has set a deadline to ban the use of petroleum coke and furnace oil as fuel in the state which is March 2024.