#pollution control fund underutilization

[townpostin]

Jamshedpur's Air Quality Crisis: Funds Underutilized Despite Health Risks

Study Reveals Toxic Metals in Air as Pollution Control Efforts Lag Jamshedpur faces severe air pollution, with high levels of toxic metals detected, while only 35.78% of allocated funds for control measures have been utilized. JAMSHEDPUR – The Steel City grapples with a mounting air pollution crisis, as recent studies unveil alarming levels of toxic metals in the air amid significant…

[budgetpe]

How Cost-Effective Is Biogas Generation from MSW Compared to Landfilling or Incineration?

Website: https://www.grunerrenewable.com

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is one of the fastest-growing urban challenges in India, with over 150,000 tonnes generated daily. Traditionally, this waste is either landfilled or burned in incinerators. But both methods come with heavy costs—financially and environmentally.

In recent years, biogas generation from MSW has emerged as a cost-effective and sustainable solution. But how does it really compare to landfilling and incineration?

Let’s break down the costs, benefits, and long-term economics of each method—so cities, municipalities, and private players can make informed decisions about managing urban waste.

♻️ What Is Biogas Generation from MSW?

Biogas generation involves the anaerobic digestion of biodegradable MSW components (like food waste, vegetable peels, and garden waste) in controlled conditions to produce methane-rich biogas and digestate. The biogas can then be used as fuel (directly or as Bio-CNG), while the digestate can be used as organic fertilizer.

💰 Capital and Operating Costs: A Comparative Look

Method

CapEx (₹/TPD)

OpEx (₹/ton)

Land Requirement

Landfilling

₹15–20 lakh

₹500–800

High (20+ acres)

Incineration

₹1.5–2.5 crore

₹1500–3000

Moderate

Biogas Plant

₹30–50 lakh

₹800–1200

Low to moderate

Note: TPD = Tonnes Per Day; CapEx and OpEx figures are based on typical Indian urban project scales.

Key Observations:

Landfilling has the lowest upfront cost but high hidden costs due to long-term environmental liabilities and land use.

Incineration is capital-intensive and often inefficient in India due to low calorific value of wet waste.

Biogas generation is moderately priced and offers returns through gas, fertilizer, and carbon credits.

🌿 Environmental Cost & Revenue Recovery

Landfilling

Produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas (GHG), unless captured.

Leachate pollutes groundwater.

No real revenue generation.

Long-term liabilities.

Incineration

Releases toxic emissions if not properly filtered.

Requires dry, high-calorific waste, which is rare in India.

Limited energy recovery; often not viable below 200 TPD.

Maintenance-heavy and often abandoned due to poor ROI.

Biogas from MSW

Captures methane and uses it productively.

Reduces GHG emissions by up to 90%.

Generates Bio-CNG, electricity, and organic fertilizer.

Can earn carbon credits and government incentives (e.g. SATAT scheme).

Can operate at small scale (5–10 TPD) or larger cluster models.

📈 Return on Investment (ROI)

Biogas ROI Potential:

1 ton of food waste can yield 80–100 m³ of biogas, which equals approx. 32–40 kg of Bio-CNG.

At ₹65/kg selling price, that's ₹2100–2600/ton in potential gas revenue.

Add fertilizer/digestate value (~₹200–300/ton) and savings on tipping fees.

🟢 Total income per ton: ₹2300–2900 🔴 Operating cost per ton: ₹800–1200 ✅ Net gain per ton: ₹1200–2000 (plus environmental benefits)

In contrast:

Landfilling has no revenue, only ongoing cost and pollution.

Incineration may recover some energy, but efficiency and reliability are low unless waste is pre-sorted.

🚛 Suitability for Indian Cities

Over 50% of MSW in India is organic and wet, making it ideal for biomethanation.

Small and medium municipalities (handling 5–50 TPD waste) can easily set up decentralized biogas plants, reducing waste transport and landfill dependence.

Biogas plants are modular and scalable, unlike large incinerators which are often underutilized.

🏆 Government Support & Incentives

The Government of India supports Bio-CNG production via:

SATAT Scheme (Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation)

MNRE Biogas Programs

Urban Swachh Bharat Mission integration

Viability Gap Funding (VGF) and tax incentives in some states

These schemes improve the cost-effectiveness of biogas plants, especially for public-private partnerships (PPP) or urban local bodies.

🧠 Final Verdict: Biogas Is the Future of Waste-to-Energy

When compared to landfilling and incineration, biogas generation from MSW stands out as the most balanced and cost-effective solution:

✅ Lower long-term cost ✅ Steady revenue through gas and by-products ✅ Low emissions, high sustainability ✅ Ideal for India’s wet waste profile

For municipalities and entrepreneurs seeking cleaner, smarter ways to manage waste, biogas is not just affordable—it’s future-ready.

👉 Explore how you can set up a biogas plant with Gruner Renewable at www.grunerrenewable.com

[businessliveme]

India Needs Its Own Canary Wharf

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Even as India is consumed by its upcoming elections, the world’s biggest, the country is nearing another milestone: It’s set to overtake the U.K. to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. By 2030, its GDP could top $10 trillion. Yet, unusually for such a geographically large and economically vibrant country, India has no states to compare to California in the U.S., China’s Guangdong province or Japan’s Kanto prefecture — all regions with $1 trillion economies. Nor does it have a city on par with New York or Tokyo, both of which boast bigger economies than countries such as Canada and Indonesia, accounting for over a tenth of national GDP apiece.

India’s next leader will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change that by transforming the country’s commercial capital, Mumbai. A better one might never come along.

Mumbai is the engine of the prosperous western state of Maharashtra, India’s largest regional economy with a GDP somewhere between $350-400 billion; the city contributes well over half the total. For Maharashtra to become a $1 trillion economy, Mumbai would need to double or triple the size of its economy, on the back of its preeminent role in service industries, especially finance. That means competing with the likes of Singapore and Shanghai to attract global banks and other world-class financial institutions to the humid, traffic-choked city.

This poses obvious challenges. It’ll require regulatory changes, in particular ending the uncertainty and complexity around taxation for financial services firms, which has led to the bulk of the local fund-management industry moving to Singapore. Maharashtra will also have to establish a first-rate system for resolving commercial disputes, involving everything from fast-track courts to international arbitration.

Just as importantly, the chaotic city needs to create an efficient core — a business district attractive enough for leading global businesses to want to locate there. Dense urban clusters create agglomeration benefits, one of the very few ways available to improve productivity permanently.

This is, to say the least, hard to imagine. However much residents love Mumbai’s freewheeling, cosmopolitan spirit, the city is an infrastructural mess. Headlong growth has worsened congestion, air pollution and the general quality of life. Urban planning is mostly an afterthought. Haphazard development and an explosion in car ownership have made parts of the cramped city virtually unnavigable during rush hour, when the average commute from the airport to downtown Mumbai can take over 1.5 hours.

However, Mumbai has a unique opportunity to turn its fortunes around. The city’s port, which occupies about 900 hectares along the prime eastern waterfront, is slowly vacating the area because shipping and allied activities have moved elsewhere. Redevelopment plans so far have focused on infrastructure, including a cruise ship terminal. The area could be something much bigger: a means to transform Mumbai into a financial powerhouse on par with Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Remember that the City of London occupies only 290 hectares. Canary Wharf, London’s new financial district where most major banks are located, is just over 40 hectares. This tiny area hosts financial services firms that provide 160,000 jobs with an average wage in excess of £100,000, while serving as a magnet for other businesses; those 40 hectares generate economic output of over $50 billion annually. Harvard’s Ed Glaeser shows that the area in midtown Manhattan between 41st and 59th Streets houses 600,000 workers, earning $100,000 on average. In Asia, the central business district of Singapore is built on 184 hectares and the Dubai International Financial Centre on 45 hectares.

Working with city and state officials, India’s next government should aim to redevelop the port area into an efficient, dense, walkable cluster offering the high quality of life and green spaces lacking in the rest of the city. The experience of reviving the London Docklands shows what’s possible. Much like Mumbai, the port of London also suffered the impact of containerized traffic in the 1960s. Soon, the entire port closed, leaving nearly 2,000 hectares of land derelict. Redeveloping the area and building Canary Wharf into a global financial center took a coordinated effort from the government, the transport authority and the property developer.

A dedicated development authority, the London Docklands Development Corporation, provided focus. Priority was placed on creating buildings with large trading floors, a key need for financial services and, in particular, robust public transport links. The latter allowed for density and access to the labor market of greater London, without worsening road congestion. Indeed, there are only 5,000 parking spaces in Canary Wharf and they are rarely full. Strategic communication efforts were designed to withstand changes in political and economic cycles.

The challenge in Mumbai will be greater. Federal structures, overlapping jurisdictions and limited state capacity make change harder. The ghosts of past planning mistakes loom large, while mechanisms to fund infrastructure through the promise of future growth are less mature. The new zone must operate with a plan that emphasizes jobs and economic dynamism, flexibility and mixed use, rather than one that is static and heavily zoned. It will also require greater coordination between government agencies to fully integrate the area with the rest of the city, with dense transportation networks being key.

Nonetheless, a big idea such as transforming the waterfront into the National Financial Capital Region could fire up imaginations among bureaucrats, bankers and citizens. What’s more, Mumbai’s port is just one of many public sites that are either unutilized or underutilized. India’s railways, ports, defense services and state-owned companies control hundreds of thousands of hectares, a large proportion of which are unproductive relative to their location in the heart of big cities. Success in Mumbai could potentially unlock much larger tracts of land across the country, boosting the economy and dramatically improving the quality of life in Indian cities. Whoever triumphs at the polls next month shouldn’t let this opportunity slip.

The post India Needs Its Own Canary Wharf appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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[nhlabornews]

Senate Passes National Defense Authorization Act With Praise From Shaheen, Hassan

(Washington, DC) – Today, the Senate passed the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is critical legislation outlining the nation’s defense priorities for the fiscal year. The bill includes the following provisions spearheaded by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Shaheen’s bipartisan amendment that would direct the Department of Defense to fund a nationwide health study on implications of perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), such as PFOA, in drinking water. In May, the Air Force announced it would not fund a health study of water contamination around Haven Well at the Pease International Tradeport – Shaheen’s amendment establishes the first-ever nationwide study on the human health effects of those exposed to PFCs in their drinking water;

Shaheen’s amendment to ban Kaspersky Lab software from being used by the federal government. The Moscow-based software company has ties to the Kremlin. Shaheen’s previous amendment to ban Kaspersky Lab software from being used by the Department of Defense was included in the committee-passed version of the bill in June. Last week, the Trump administration heeded Senator Shaheen’s call to ban the software company from all federal agencies;

Shaheen’s amendment encourages military exchanges (retail stores), including the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) on 3,100 U.S. Army and Air Force installations worldwide, to select more small business suppliers for its convenience and department stores;

Shaheen’s amendment to expand the ability of small businesses in rural areas to participate in the Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) program, which helps small businesses sell to the federal government;

Shaheen’s amendment to ensure that all non-active service members and their dependents have contraception coverage with no cost-share, bringing TRICARE in line with standard civilian birth control coverage;

Shaheen negotiated an additional 4,000 visas for the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program. The SIV program allows Afghan interpreters and support staff who have assisted in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and face threats as a result of their service to apply for refuge in the United States. Shaheen’s efforts have been instrumental in keeping this program operating for the brave men and women who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Americans in the field, putting themselves and their families at risk to support American troops and operations.

“This bill contains a number of measures to help our communities, including my bipartisan amendment to authorize the Department of Defense to fund a health study on PFOA contaminant, which has polluted water supplies across the nation, and among them, the Haven Well at Pease International Tradeport,” said Shaheen. “The affected communities in New Hampshire have been fighting tirelessly for answers about the risks from exposure to perfluorinated chemicals in their drinking water. They deserve answers, and this measure will help do just that. Going forward, I’ll work to ensure that this national study pays particular attention to the health impacts on Seacoast residents so we can give peace of mind to New Hampshire families who have been impacted by these contaminants.”

“The case against Kaspersky Lab is overwhelming. The strong ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are alarming and well-documented. I’m very pleased that the Senate has acted in a bipartisan way on my amendment that removes a real vulnerability to our national security. I applaud the Trump administration for heeding my call to remove Kaspersky Lab software from all federal computers. It’s important that this prohibition also be a part of statute and be expanded to the entire federal government, as my amendment would do. Considering the strong bipartisan, bicameral support for this proposal, I’m optimistic this will soon be signed into law.”

“We are forever indebted to the courageous Afghan civilian interpreters who risk their lives to help American forces. Their efforts have not only supported the United States’ mission in Afghanistan, but they have protected and saved the lives of our service members in the field, helping to ensure that our soldiers make it home to their families. Though investments in this program have previously wavered, I’m encouraged by this bill’s authorization to bolster visa allocations for interpreters and support staff, and I have confidence that Congress will build on this progress as we move forward,” Shaheen concluded.

Senator Maggie Hassan voted to support the legislation and released the following statement.

“In the face of a vast number of national security threats we face as a country, it is essential that the brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to defend our freedom have the support and resources necessary to keep all Granite Staters and Americans safe,” said Senator Hassan. “I am proud to support the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, which supports critical priorities for our national security including providing important funding to upgrade facilities at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.”

“This bipartisan legislation will not only help strengthen security in New Hampshire, but will help boost our economy and create jobs by authorizing funding for the procurement of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which several suppliers in the Granite State help develop,” Senator Hassan added. “I will continue working across the aisle to ensure that our state and our country remain the strongest military force, while also remaining the greatest force for good.”

The NDAA for 2018 also establishes a nationwide health study on perfluorinated chemicals and other emerging contaminants in drinking war, it includes a 2.1 percent pay increase for U.S. military personnel.

The NDAA passed the Senate by a vote of 89 to 8.

The Senate and House of Representatives will now go to conference on the legislation where it will be finalized and sent to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

Senate Passes National Defense Authorization Act With Praise From Shaheen, Hassan was originally published on NH LABOR NEWS