Thane city can cut carbon footprint by 22% in three years: NIUA report

A new report suggests that Thane city in India can reduce its annual carbon footprint by 22% by 2026. The report outlines various measures including the use of rooftop solar, electric mobility, waste-to-energy plants, and energy-efficient street lighting. Thane's annual greenhouse gas emissions currently stand at 2.29 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or 1.09 tonnes per person, compared to nearby Mumbai's emissions of 23.42 million tonnes, or 1.8 tonnes per person. The report also highlights the need for integrated water and wastewater management to address high-risk emissions sources.

Thane: By 2026, Thane city could reduce its annual carbon footprint by 22%, according to a new report, ‘State of Cities: Towards Low Carbon and Resilient Pathways’, published by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), in partnership with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), South Asia.

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As per the report, Thane has an annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions load of 2.29 million tCO2e (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent), which comes to around 1.09 tCO2eq per person. By comparison, nearby Mumbai city’s GHG emissions for 2019 stood at 23.42 million tCO2eq, or about 1.8 tCO2eq per person.

Consumption of energy, transport and waste are by and large the biggest contributors, and the specific sources of these emissions, respectively, would be thermal (coal-driven) power plants, tailpipe exhausts, and landfills and sewers that emit biogas.

Thane city also uses 13.06 million GigaJoule (GJ) energy and consumes 1,677 million kWh electricity annually. When it comes to consumption, residential buildings consume the highest energy (47%), and are also the highest GHG contributors (43%).

In terms of the amount of energy consumed by the local government, its GHG emissions profile puts transport as the highest energy guzzler (36.9%), but the highest emissions contributor (47.8%) is public sector buildings. The report’s projections for Thane till 2025-26 are increased average minimum temperature and average rainfall, for both the city and the wider district.

The report has also proposed some action points to guide the path forward for Thane, which is a growing commercial and residential hub in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (with its economy mainly based on consumer-related services including hospitality and IT industry).

To reduce emissions by 22% in the near future, all buildings (residential, commercial, industrial) must use rooftop solar and solar water heaters, evaluate integration of District Cooling Systems and conduct energy audits so that they can be retrofitted with more energy-efficient utilities, with emphasis on solar PV and solar water heating systems at hotels and hospitals.

The transport sector meanwhile should look at developing an Electric Mobility framework, introducing electric buses with solar PV charging facilities at depots, and replacing the existing diesel bus fleet with CNG buses. There must also be a push for the use of EVs as intermediate public transport (IPT), the report states.

In the area of waste management, Thane municipal corporation has the ability to process about 600 tonnes per day (TPD) through waste-to-energy, and 2 TPD of plastic through plastic-to-fuel plants. Scientific closure of landfills, development of a city-level solar farm, and decentralised bio-methanation and composting plants for organic waste have all been identified as feasible measures for reducing Thane GHG burden, in addition to widespread deployment of energy efficient street-lighting, which the city has already implemented in isolated locations.

Municipal buildings can reduce heat stress through urban cooling measures and implement solar PV systems to meet energy demands. Water and wastewater departments should deploy and use renewable energy at water supply and sewage treatment facilities, says the report, which named wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and solid waste management as high-risk emissions sources.

“Thane can look at an integrated urban water management and catchment management plan. Additionally, there can be integrated groundwater management through increased recharge efficiency. For wastewater treatment, we need to look at a faecal sludge management policy with reuse methods and dual plumbing. An internet-of-things-based stormwater grid to harvest rainwater, with regular monitoring, can also help build an early warning system for floods. So there are risks, but the report also shows precisely how to mitigate them in the near future,” said Emani Kumar, executive director, ICLEI South Asia.