Electricity generation from waste is not solution for waste management. This was brought home after the Indian subsdiary of Energy Developments Limited (EDL), Australian company which has been now reported to be missing in action. EDL had given a presentation to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) on January 7, 2003 renewing its proposal to set up the resource incineration plant in Chennai; the presentation, however, failed to answer most environmental and feasibility questions.

On January 31 2004, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, announced in the Assembly plans to pursue a 14.85 MW plant to produce power from the city’s garbage, using gasification pyrolysis technology, in Perungudi.

Energy Developments Limited India (EDL India) is a subsidiary of the Australian company, 12 per cent of whose shares are held by the US-based Smith family’s Brightstar Synfuel Corporation. Brightstar reports that till June 30, 2002, over the last 11 years, it has invested $148 million in the development of its gasification technology. Does this not mean that, till June 2002, the technology was still in a developing stage? And now even if it has been ‘developed’, according to EDL, why should we expose our ecological space for its trial?

The plant has been proposed at the Perungudi dumpsite where the company has been leased a 15-acre plot of land for 15 years by the Chennai Municipal Corporation. The dumpsite receives about 1,200 tonnes of waste per day. The company intends to dispose of waste and recover electricity through gasification technology, which EDL calls a Solid Waste Energy Recycling Facility (SWERF). The company also claims to have a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).

The world’s first and only SWERF plant, in Wollongong (New South Wales, Australia), is still in an experimental and developing stage. Environmental activists and some welfare associations have criticised EDL’s Chennai project on the grounds that since the only functional facility using a similar technology is still on an experimental run, there is no need to promote an untested project in Chennai.

The word ‘recycling’ in the process is a misnomer used to mislead gullible bureaucrats and the media. In fact, a technology like this will kill the recycling sector and destroy the source of livelihoods of people working in this sector.

Gasification is an incineration process that emits dioxins, the most poisonous cancer-causing toxin known in the world. Incineration transfers the hazardous characteristics of waste from solid form to air, water and ash. It also releases new toxins, which were not present in the original waste stream, besides generating heavy metals.

Contrary to what EDL says, the gasification of waste leads to global warming and cannot be allowed, as India is a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol. Annexure A of the Protocol lays down that incineration processes cause greenhouse gas emissions. It is a resource destroying process.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the corporation and EDL has been kept confidential, despite the fact that Tamil Nadu has a Right to Information Act in place. The agreement is inaccessible even to media people and researchers.

The company proposes to produce 14.85 MW of electricity using 600 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste per day given by the Chennai Corporation. It plans to sell it to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) at a cost of Rs. 3.87 per unit.

EDL’s claim that the plant will eliminate the need for a dumping ground by diverting 80 per cent of the waste is false. Where will the plant dispose of the ash? It says it will return the remaining 20-25 per cent of toxic waste to the corporation. How will the corporation deal with this waste? EDL’s presentation also says that 34.64 per cent of Perungudi’s waste is inert. This means that even if EDL’s incinerator becomes functional, the corporation will have to deal with the remaining 50-55 per cent of the waste.

Even this is the scenario only in theory. In practice, the corporation will still have to deal with 70-75% of waste. Ash and suspended particulate matter that emerge from combustion technologies like these is a perpetual problem because, although there is volume reduction of waste through this technique, the management problem of the ever-growing ash remains. As a consequence, several toxins will enter the food chain and poison the health and environment for generations. The technology thus intends to use Chennai residents as nothing more than guinea pigs!

Interestingly, in the presentation made by EDL to the TNPCB, it tried to contradict the composition of the waste as given by the corporation, but it failed to show the presence of mercury in the waste. The advocates of the project have no way to segregate mercury from the garbage as is required. This is yet another instance of ignoring environment and public health effects.

EDL’s controversial incineration technology emits dioxins, which the company would have us believe would be much lower than the permitted level. However, it has been clearly shown that dioxin is carcinogenic even in trace quantities. Further, no Indian laboratory has tested dioxins. How then can there be a permissible limit here in India?

While India has made an international commitment to minimise the production and use of 12 of the most toxic chemicals in the world, known as the Dirty Dozen, by signing the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Stockholm Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), it subsidises and promotes the production of POPs throughout the country.

The current policy of the Union Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES) to promote dioxin-emitting high heat waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies runs counter to the provisions of the POPs treaty. The MNES has issued an executive order to all the state chief secretaries and administrators of Union Territories, asking them to promote such WTE projects. As a consequence, agreements for many such toxic projects have been signed and are in the process of being signed around the country. Surprisingly, these projects appear to have undergone no environment impact assessment and public hearing process. Even approval from the Technical Appraisal Committee (TAC) seems not to have been sought.

Chennai Corporation Council, passed a resolution on the subsidy component sharing aspect for the waste-to-energy project at Perungudi in June 2004. But even the Corporation officials are so sure that the project will not materialize because EDL has not contacted them for more than a year.

The Corporation officials say the resolution was a mere formality they had to do because of the government announcement in 2001, giving the green signal to the project.

EDL’s project in Delhi’s Gazipur gasification-based WTE project with 1000 MT per day to generate 25 MW of power has been shelved following pollution-related objections.

How can a technology, which has been found polluting in Delhi, become non-polluting in Chennai?