Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal given his in principal approval to a UK-based company to set up a Rs 3,000 crore Integrated Waste-to-energy plant in the state with a capacity to convert 1500 tonnes of waste per day into thermal energy and power.

Newkerala.com reports that the approval came during a presentation given to the Chief Minister by a team of U. K. Company Waste2Energy Holdings Ltd., which proposed to take waste and produce thermal energy to be used to generate power and also to purify water for manufacturing bottled drinking water. The company would have wastes collection centers within the 100 kms radius of the plant initially and later on the area would be expanded to the whole state. The company would have its own fleet of transport system to collect the wastes from different towns and bring it to the plant for processing.

Within the town the company would evolve its own door-to-door collection system for collecting domestic/industrial solid/liquid/petroleum waste.

The company said that with the setting up of integrated waste to energy plant, methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the dumping grounds from the state would reduce.

The company sought total cooperation from government to set up this plant and a piece of 100-acre land in a centrally located place in the State for setting up the plant. The company can either buy land from the market at the market rate or the State Government can acquire land for the project and the market value of the land given to the company for setting up the plant would be treated as equity participation of the State government in that plant.

The company would give 75 % of bottled water manufactured by it to the state government for further sale and would reserve right to sell 25 % of bottled water in domestic as well as international markets.