Chhattisgarh has been included in the Centre’s mega pipeline project for the supply of cooking gas. This would be for the first time that the State has been included in the massive gas grid, already operational in several States of the country.
The Centre has approved the project, which is expected to go on stream next year, Chief Minister Raman Singh informed while chairing a meeting of departmental secretaries in the Mantralaya here. Singh stated that the gas pipeline would pass from the State through Rajnandgaon to Mahasamund and onwards into neighbouring Odisha.
He said that the pipeline would also cover the industrial city of Korba. Singh demanded from the Centre that the project provide maximum advantage to the households and industrial units in Chhattisgarh. The Chief Minister directed the officials to prepare an action plan for the project at the earliest which would be presented to the Centre for its approval.
Notably, Chhattisgarh has achieved considerable success with the use of bio gas for cooking and home lighting purposes in the remote rural pockets such as insurgency infested Bastar region. For instance, as many as 3604 bio-gas plants have come up in the insurgency infested Kanker district in Bastar during the past 14 years, officials informed.
The plants have been established under the National Bio Gas and Manure Management Programme. The bio gas plants not only work as fuel for cooking, the units also illuminate homes at night. Women and children in the villages now no longer go to the forest in search of fuel wood. The move had also helped reduce pollution, they stated
Moreover, as per 2013-14 Annual Report of the Union Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Chhattisgarh commissioned biomass power and bagasse co-generation projects with a cumulative capacity of 264.90 MW last year.
The biomass power and bagasse co-generation programme aims at efficient utilisation of biomass such as Agro residue in the form of stalks, stems and straw; agro-industrial residues such as shells, husks, deoiled cakes and wood from dedicated energy plantations for power generation, it stated
The potential for power generation from agricultural and Agro-industrial residues in the country is estimated at about 17,000 MW, it stated. With progressive higher steam temperature, pressure and efficient project configuration in new sugar mills and modernisation of existing ones, the potential of surplus power generation through bagasse co-generation of sugar mills is estimated at 5,000 MW, the report stated.
The potential for bagasse co-generation lies mainly in the nine sugar producing States with a maximum potential of about 1,250 MW each in Maharashatra and Uttar Pradesh. Thus the total estimated biomass power potential in the country is 22,000 MW, it stated. The programme was launched with the objective of promoting, efficient and economic use of surplus biomass for power generation besides maximising surplus power generation from sugar mills using improved technologies.
This apart, the programme had also been launched for promoting technologies of co-generation and biomass combustion for supplementing conventional power, it stated. The biomass programme comprises the components of power generation in grid-connected mode and co-generation in sugar mills for export of surplus power to grid.
The Central Government, as per the report, has set a target of 1900 MW ( 1400 MW bagasse co-generation besides 500 MW biomass power ) for the 12th five year plan against an allocation of Rs310 crore.
The State-wise cumulative capacity of commissioned biomass power and bagasse co-generation projects during 2013-14 as per the report was as follows— Andhra Pradesh ( before bifurcation)(380.75 MW), Bihar(43.42 MW), Chhattisgarh(264.90 MW), Gujarat(43.90 MW), Haryana(45.30 MW), Karnataka( 603.28), Madhya Pradesh(26 MW), Maharashtra (940.40MW), Odisha(20 MW), Punjab(140.50 MW), Rajasthan(101.30MW), Tamil Nadu(571.30MW), Uttarakhand ( 30 MW), Uttar Pradesh(776.50 MW) and West Bengal(26 MW).
The report further stated that as many as 568 remote villages in Chhattisgarh, out of the sanctioned 682, were electrified under Central Government’s ‘Remote Village Electrification Programme’ as on March 31, 2014, according to the annual report 2013-14 of the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The ‘Remote Village Electrification Programme’ is under implementation across the country for providing financial support for lighting/basic electricity using renewable energy sources in those unelectrified remote census villages, unelectrified hamlets of electrified census villages where grid connectivity is either not feasible or not cost effective and not covered under Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) for grid electrification.