The sugarcane department’s bid to revive its co-generation project for its Kitcha and Baajpur sugar mills in Uttarakhand on PPP mode has failed to take off due to indifferent attitude of the government.
With the Assembly elections round the corner, top officials said any decision regarding the co-generation project will now be taken by the new government.
“If we have to go for go-generation, first we have to expand the capacity of our boilers,” said Vinod Sharma, additional secretary Sugarcane department.
Sharma said the utilisation of pine needles for co-generation was not viable option. Last year, the forest department had raised objection over the sugarcane department’s move to utilise pine needles for the co-generation saying it has also taken up a similar project to produce 10 Mw of clean energy by setting up a gasifier-based plant. Due to this objection, the sugarcane department decided not to use pine-needles for generating power through co-generation in the sugar mills.
Chief secretary Subhash Kumar last year held a series of meetings on PPP projects and called for reviving the co-generation project which failed to make any headway during the past few years. But since then, the project failed to take off mainly due to lack of enthusiasm shown by sugarcane minister Madan Kaushik and bureaucrats.
According to the original plan, the government had explored various options under which the co-generation process can produce power from natural waste and other sources throughout the year. Under this plan, the co-generation was from bagasse for only four months from December to March. But, during the off-season, the fire material was different.
In April-May, it was wheat-husk, June-July pine needles, August-September eucalyptus trees and in October-November, rice-husks. In this way, the government had tried to attract sugar mills participating in the bidding process to produce power throughout the year.
“We will not be using pine needles now, since the forest department had raised objections,” said a government official.
The forest department is of the view that this biomass waste could be utilised for multiple usages like gasifier-based energy, briquettes and other environment-friendly products leading to reduction in carbon emission.
