In a bid to promote and develop biomass-based projects to harness clean power and safeguard environment in the state, the Haryana Government has notified the Haryana Bio-energy Policy 2018. A target has been set to achieve minimum 150 MW biomass based power generation by 2022, said a spokesman of New and Renewable Energy Department.
He said that the state has surplus biomass availability of 8416 thousand tonnes which has tremendous potential for utilization of the crops residues to generate electricity, biogas, bio-CNG, bio-manure and bio-fuels. Apart from this, the state has potential to generate about 1000 MW of power or 11.5 lakh tonnes of bio-CNG, said he.
The spokesman said that the need to promote these projects has been further necessitated due to the aggravated environmental issues because of burning of crop residues in fields.
Promoting use of biomass for production of energy including cogeneration, bio-CNG, bio-char and bio fuels and bio-ethanol would help reduce dependence on conventional sources energy thereby reducing import Bills and also, help to improve environment and soil health, said he.
The State Government would provide incentives for such projects set up in the state to eligible project developers.
The Government would facilitate the lease of Panchayat land at reasonable rates directly through Panchayat as per prevailing Government Policy for setting up of biomass projects for minimum period of 35 years, said he.
These projects would not require any change of land use (clu) approval from Town and Country Planning and Urban Local Bodies (ULB) Departments. Also, no fee would be charged by the Pollution Control Board for issuing Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO) for such project anywhere in the state, the spokesman said.
The biomass projects up to 10 MW capacity set up under this policy would be treated as “Must Run” power plants and would not be subjected to Merit Order Dispatch (MoD) principles and would not be asked to back down as this would badly affect their viability and planning for fuel linkage, added he.