India's fuel challenge

Setting the agenda

In his introductory address to delegates, Ratan Shah, group executive president, UltraTech Ltd, highlighted the need for the industry to shift away from its reliance on fossil fuels, not only in response to CO2 reduction efforts, but also as a key strategy to ensure sustainable energy supply.

He noted that India, the second-largest producer of cement in the world after China, is likely to see its capacity of 353Mta double over the next decade, generating a huge increase in energy consumption, which is currently supplied primarily by coal.

Mr Shah also pointed out that the Indian cement industry is already one of the most energy efficient in the world: “Through adoption of best available technologies and practices,” he said, “the industry has reduced CO2 emissions from 1120kg in 1996 to 720kg in 2010.”

However, more can be achieved and the co-processing of waste in cement kilns provides a win-win solution to reducing the industry’s reliance on fossil fuels, while providing an important environmental management service to society.

According to Mr Shah, the current thermal substitution rate (TSR) of fossils fuels by alternative fuels in India stands at just 0.6 per cent, far below the double-digit rates achieved in developed countries.

Hazardous waste can play an important but limited role in raising the TSR level: “The cement industry in India has the potential to utilise the entire hazardous waste generation of the country by co-processing,” said Mr Shah. “However, this will increase the fuel substitution rate by a maximum of one per cent.“

The target for fossil fuel substitution of five per cent set by the 12th National Plan, he continued, was an “ambitious” one, and only achievable if considerable efforts are made by all stakeholders.

“The challenge here,” said Mr Shah, “is to set up efficient waste collection systems and pre-processing facilities, while the industry needs to continuously invest in co-processing and alternative fuel feeding systems.”

“The policy makers also need to support the industry to achieve its goal. A few of these areas include free movement of hazardous waste across states; single approval for a given waste across all states; appropriate incentives for processing and use of municipal wastes and the deregulation of used-tyre importation.”

In his address to delegates, M Muthiah, managing director of Chettinad Cement Corp Ltd and CMA president, reinforced concerns relating to the cement industry’s dependence on coal as its primary fuel. “Energy constitutes approximately 50 per cent of the cost of manufacturing cement,” he explained. “The industry currently imports large amounts of coal to meet its energy needs and is in competition for domestic coal with the power sector.”

Increasing alternative fuel utilisation would result in the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, avoid associated coal imports and competition for domestic resources, while simultaneously mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and provide an environmentally-sound solution for India’s growing waste problem.

The way forward

Having established the key concerns and targets facing the cement industry, the conference saw the launch of a major new report, entitled ‘Action plan for enhancing the use of alternate fuels and raw materials in the Indian cement industry’. Co-authored by the CMA and IIP, and supported by Holtec Consulting as technical partner, the report sets out a series of key recommendations for the industry (see p73) and identifies the five ‘most promising’ alternative fuels available to cement producers in India, namely: biomass, residue derived fuel (RDF) from municipal solid waste (MSW), used tyres, hazardous waste (HW) and industrial waste (see Table 1). Meanwhile, fly ash and slag were shortlisted as the most promising raw materials.

Waste potential

Taking up the agenda from the point of view of India’s Low-Carbon Technology Roadmap, Dr S K Handoo, technical advisor at the CMA, outlined the Indian cement industry’s target to reduce emissions from 0.63t CO2/t cement in 2010 to 0.35t CO2/t cement by 2050. He reported that in terms of alternative raw materials uptake, the Indian cement industry is performing at a high level. It is a major consumer of fly ash: of 160Mta fly ash generated, some 92Mta is recycled, of which the cement industry consumes 50Mta. In addition, more than 10Mta of GGBF slag is consumed by the industry. In total, blended cements in India have increased from 18 per cent of total production in 1989 to 70 per cent in 2011-12.

Discussing alternative fuels, he argued that from the 58.4Mta of municipal waste produced in India, it should be feasible to generate 9Mt of RDF – enough to replace 4.5Mt of coal for cement plants.

Dr Kåre Karstensen of Sintef (Norway) provided an update on the Indo-Norwegian project on co-processing of HW. It is estimated that 7.66Mta of HW is generated in the country each year, of which 0.65Mta is available for co-processing (the rest is recycled or otherwise considered unavailable). Sintef continues to work intensively with the Indian cement industry and related authorities to confirm the viability of HW co-processing in India, provide technical know-how and support ongoing efforts to secure regulatory approval.

Providing insights from the cement producer’s perspective, Mr Sivagurunathan of India Cement Ltd (ICL), the largest producer in southern India with 16Mta cement production capacity, described his company’s well-established AF programme. The company’s portfolio of alternative wastes include waste plastic, industrial waste, solid and liquid waste from the pharmaceutical industry, sludge from the chemical industry, and biomass (including cashew shells, rice husk, ground-nut and coconut shells, chilli stems).

Mr Sivagurunathan’s presentation clearly illustrated that the key challenge to raising AF usage in India is not related to technical limitations, but policy and investment barriers. In the case of plastic waste in Tamil Nadu, for example, the absence of any regulation for compulsory segregation of plastics at source, or corresponding financial compensation for doing so, means that the municipalities fail to collect up to 90 per cent of plastic waste that could otherwise be used as a fuel. This renders the investment cost for setting up suitable waste collection and processing systems unviable in economic terms for the cement producer.

Pavel Cech, regional VP of Industrial Ecology at Lafarge Asia, noted the French group’s global substitution of fossils fuels worldwide reached an average of 16 per cent in 2012. Against this achievement, India’s performance was hugely disappointing and ranked at the very bottom of the global and regional AFR benchmarks, behind Pakistan and the Philippines in Asia, and only comparable to levels achieved in the relatively less industrialised countries of Uganda and Benin.

Mr Cech argued that the complexity and inefficiency of the permitting process in India is a significant factor hindering AF usage in India. The misalignment among individual states, where the same waste is classified hazardous in one state while it remains non-hazardous in another, presents another barrier to cement producers. Furthermore, the lack of enforcement of environmental regulations has allowed polluters to dispose of waste illegally and at no cost, therefore removing any incentive to make it available to cement producers. He also noted significant interference by authorities, citing the example of the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) which has banned the use of a given biomass stream by the cement industry in favour of the power sector without any supportive regulation.

Conclusions

In his summing up of the conference, Hardik Shah, member secretary of the Gujurat Pollution Control Board, urged all stakeholders to renew their efforts to enable higher AFR usage in the country: “Let us all work together to raise the TSR from less than one per cent today to 25 per cent by 2030, through the utilisation of wastes as proposed in our planning document in a gainful and environmentally-friendly manner.”

While many delegates viewed this target as very ambitious, it was certainly seen as highly desirable, given the demographic realities facing India in the future. Over the past 30 years, India’s population has doubled, and on current projections is likely to overtake China by 2030. The implications for the environment, resource consumption and waste management are enormous.

Co-processing in India is only just beginning, but provides a win-win solution for society by offering the best possible waste management solution while enabling the cement sector to substantially reduce CO2 emissions and achieve a level of energy security by reducing its reliance on scarce primary fossil fuels.
This inaugural meeting has served to highlight the immense policy and regulatory challenges that are largely responsible for preventing India’s cement industry from achieving more substantial AF utilisation levels more in line with global sector benchmarks. Going forward, the industry and government will have to increase meaningful cooperation, and mobilise resources quickly and decisively for the status quo to change.