UltraTech and PRESPL sign MOU for scaling up use of Agri Waste as fuel in cement manufacturing
#Bioenergy #Cement #UltraTech
October 2021: UltraTech Cement, the largest manufacturer of grey cement, white cement and ready-mix concrete in India, has announced signing a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Punjab Renewable Energy Systems Pvt. Ltd (PRESPL), India’s largest biomass aggregation and densification company with forward integrated value chain. The MoU is part of UltraTech’s endeavor to decarbonize its operations and aims to significantly scale-up the use of biomass in place of fossil fuel like coal in UltraTech’s manufacturing operations.
Under the agreement, PRESPL will leverage its technological expertise to replace coal-based systems with biomass-based processes. PRESPL will execute the biomass-based projects at three of UltraTech’s units. Cumulatively, implementation of these three projects is estimated to generate annual carbon savings of over 150 thousand tonnes of CO2.
As part of this agreement, PRESPL will also build a sustainable supply chain of agricultural waste to be utilized as biomass energy in the kilns of UltraTech’s integrated units. This biomass-based fuel model helps to safely dispose agri-residue, which is currently burnt in open fields, thus helping reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
Higher usage of agri-residue in cement kilns, will also augment income for farmers, while reducing the country’s dependency on coal imports.
“UltraTech, as a founding member of Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has committed to ‘Climate Ambition 2050’, to deliver carbon neutral concrete by 2050. We have taken an ambitious target of reducing Scope-1 GHG intensity by 27% by 2032, taking 2017 as baseline. Our MoU with PRESPL, is a step to further accelerate our efforts to decarbonise our operations and deliver our sustainability targets,” said Mr Kailash Jhanwar, Managing Director, UltraTech Cement.
The MoU with PRESPL will help to further accelerate and scale up UltraTech’s use of waste in its manufacturing operations thus reducing its carbon footprint while also reducing the waste to landfill for society at large.
Enabling Circular Economy UltraTech has been one of the early adopters of alternative fuel and alternate raw material in its manufacturing operations. UltraTech uses waste including municipal solid waste as alternative fuel in its kilns through co-processing. UltraTech uses industrial waste as alternate raw material in manufacturing thus reducing and conserving the use of natural resources such as limestone.
In FY21 alone, UltraTech has used more than 20 million tons of industrial waste as raw materials. This has resulted in annual CO2 reduction of more than 10 million tons. Additionally, UltraTech has used three lakh tons of waste, including municipal waste, as alternate fuel in its kilns. As a result, in FY21, UltraTech replaced more than three per cent of its fuel requirement with alternative materials, and more than 18 per cent Page 2 of 2 of its raw material needs were met through alternative sources. In fact, over the last ten years UltraTech has used more than 100 million tons of waste as raw material and fuel in its manufacturing operations.
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