Waste plant won’t start before 2 years

Gurgaon: If the Khattar government has its way, the Bandhwari waste plant will be made functional by November 2018. Till then, the Millennium City will have to bear the stink of garbage being dumped at the defunct plant. Almost three years after it was shut, the state government is all set to build a waste-to-energy plant at Bandhwari and has decided the rate at which the state power department will purchase electricity from the operator.
Principal secretary of the urban local bodies department Anand Mohan Sharan told TOI, “We will float the request for proposal (RFP) within a couple of days. We hope that more than a dozen companies would participate in the tender process. It will be a waste-to-energy plant, and whichever firm bags the order will be paid Rs 7.05 per unit by the power department for treating garbage and generating electricity. The entire project cost is likely to be around Rs 330 crore. However, it will take around two years to make the plant functional. This is the minimum time required to acquire and set up the machinery at the plant.”
The government has also planned to incentivise operators in an attempt to ensure that maximum amount of waste is treated to generate power. “For the first time in the country, a treatment plant will be set up on OBI (output-based incentive). For instance, the lowest bidder in the tender process says he will charge Rs 20 for each unit of electricity produced from the treated waste, and since the power department will pay only Rs 7.05 per unit, the remaining Rs 12.95 will be paid by the MCG. This incentive is to ensure that the operator treats maximum waste, thereby generating more power,” said Sharan.
The government is also ready to pay a tipping fee to the operator. While it will pay Rs 1,000 per tonne from the time the tender is awarded and the plant is made functional, it will pay Rs 333 per tonne thereafter. According to MCG officials, the lack of a provision of tipping fee was the main reason behind the plant’s failure last time.
“Tipping fee is the amount given to the operator for the quantity of waste transported to the processing facility. No tipping fee was given to the previous operator, owing to which he probably ran into losses and abandoned the project,” said a senior MCG official.