To cut down stubble burning and reduce environmental pollution, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday virtually inaugurated the country’s first-of-its-kind paddy straw-based Briquetting Plant of 100 tons per day capacity at Patiala.
Calling it an overdue initiative, the Chief Minister said that the new technology will not only help check environmental pollution through gainful utilization of paddy straw in the State but will also enable farmers, especially small ones, earn extra income from sale of paddy stubble.Confident that more such plants would come up in the future to ease Punjab’s stubble burning problem, he said that the low calorific value of 3,500 for briquettes (as compared with 7,000 for coal) is amply balanced out economically since coal costs Rs 10,000 per ton as against Rs 4,500 per ton for briquette.
Further, with oil becoming expensive, this is also a more viable source of energy, he added.
The plant has been set up at Kulburchan village in Patiala district, at a capital cost of Rs 5.50 crore, by Punjab State Council for Science and Technology (PSCST) in collaboration with Private Partner M/s Punjab Renewable Energy Systems Private Limited, with the support of Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change under the Climate Change Action Programme.
Lauding the efforts of scientists, farmers and farm equipment manufacturers to make India self-reliant in food production, the Chief Minister said that with this new technological intervention, paddy straw from around 40 villages in the plants’ vicinity will be converted to green fuel.
“Not only will this help in checking environmental pollution, which has become more dangerous amid the COVID pandemic, but also the resultant health hazards,” he added.
The plant will utilize 45,000 ton paddy straw and would help replace fossil fuel in industries, thus resulting in carbon footprint reduction to the tune of 78,000 ton CO2. The state Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan welcomed the establishment of the plant as an important initiative as part of various measures being taken by the State Government to check the menace of paddy burning in the field.She expressed confidence that successful commercialisation of such technological interventions will pave the way for their replication not only across the State but the entire country.”A predominantly agricultural state, Punjab generates huge quantities of agri-residue, and while wheat straw gets consumed as fodder etc, the management of paddy straw is a major challenge for the state,” she said.