Enhancing the Use of Alternate Fuels and Raw Materials (Co-processing) in cement manufacture: White Papers on Selected Topics

India is the second largest producer of cement in the world and is likely to see its capacity of 350 Million Tonnes per annum (Mta) double over the next decade, resulting in a huge surge in coal demand. This demand for coal is projected to increase in the range of 63 – 96 Million Tonnes (MT) during 2012 – 2017 as per the Planning Commission’s 12th Plan Report on cement industry. The use of wastes as a fuel in cement kilns provides an opportunity to address this problem. However, the current thermal substitution rate (TSR) of fossil fuels by alternate fuels in India ranges between just 0.5-1%, which is far below the double-digit rates achieved in developed countries. In some developed countries, this figure is as high as 60%. This is diagnosed to be due to a number of policy and regulatory bottlenecks along with technical and financial issues, which, in many cases, are interlinked. In order to identify and resolve the regulatory and policy issues, IIP created a Forum of Regulators with high level representation from State Pollution Control Boards of major cement producing states in India. The Forum of Regulators reviewed the provisions of existing policy and regulatory guidelines and came out with a series of recommendations that were developed as five White papers. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) appreciated this work and created a ‘National Task Force on Co-processing’ to take the recommendations of the Forum forward. The White paper compendium developed by IIP was released and presented at the first meeting of the National Task Force (NTF) on 13th November, 2014.