Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management
While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi, authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link.
The report mentions that a WTE plant operates in close proximity to Sukhdev Vihar and is contributing to heating up the upper-middle-class neighbourhood. It quotes Vikas Mehta, a resident of the posh colony, saying that living near the plant feels like living in a heat chamber, and attributes this to the toxic emissions from the plant. He also claims there has been a sharp rise in cancer cases reported from the area.
Although I haven’t lived in Sukhdev Vihar since, except for brief visits during my years in Moscow — where I worked as Patriot’s foreign correspondent until the paper folded in 1993 — I have seen photos residents took from their rooftops showing the WTE plant looming nearby. The plant is no more than 250 metres from any part of the colony. Residents have even resorted to covering their balconies with large green curtains to prevent fly ash from entering their homes.
The Okhla WTE plant became operational in 2012. Developed by the Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company Limited (TOWMCL), a subsidiary of the Jindal Group, the plant was designed to convert around 2,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste into electricity daily, ostensibly to address Delhi’s mounting waste management and power supply challenges.
However, since its commissioning, the plant has faced significant resistance from residents of Sukhdev Vihar, Haji Colony, and Sarita Vihar. They have frequently protested and submitted memorandums to the authorities, raising concerns about environmental degradation, toxic emissions, and illegal ash dumping. Despite their opposition, the plant continues to operate and process waste.
I remember, during our decade-long stay in Sukhdev Vihar, a sewage treatment plant operated in the same general location where the WTE plant now stands. Occasionally, when the wind blew in our direction, the foul smell from the plant was a nuisance — but it was tolerable. In fact, the plant had laid a pipeline to supply biogas for cooking to Sukhdev Vihar and nearby colonies. It was very affordable. By 2010, however, I was told all 4,000 biogas connections had been terminated due to excessive leakage in several places.
The Okhla WTE plant is not the only such facility residents in Delhi have been complaining about. According to the Burning Waste… report, published by the People’s Alliance for Waste Accountability (PAWA), there are four WTE plants in the National Capital Region: Okhla, Ghazipur, Bawana, and Tehkhand. Together, they incinerate approximately 7,250 tonnes of waste daily — 66% of Delhi’s total.
Ideally, believes the report, WTE plants should process only non-recyclable, high-calorific-value municipal solid waste. However, in Delhi — as in much of India — they burn mixed waste, including organic matter, plastics, paper, cardboard, textiles, e-waste, hazardous and medical waste. During incineration, these materials undergo chemical reactions in which combustible elements are rapidly oxidized, releasing energy in the form of heat.
The report highlights that many countries, including the United States and several in Europe, are moving away from WTE technology due to its climate, environmental, health, and livelihood impacts. Since 2000, the US has shut down 53 WTE facilities. Likewise, major European financial institutions have begun excluding WTEs from their investment portfolios.
Yet in India, these centralized WTEs remain policymakers’ favoured waste management “solution.” One key reason is that only 8% of Delhi’s waste is currently managed in a decentralized manner through composting centres and material recovery facilities.
Even more alarming, the report points out that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) plans to nearly double the volume of waste incinerated in WTEs by 2027. This is despite Delhi government studies indicating that only 10.10% of waste is non-recyclable, while around 50% is biodegradable and should be processed in composting centres or biogas plants, in line with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.
The report warns that incinerating such massive volumes of waste could further damage Delhi’s already poor air quality and worsen urban heat and pollution islands. It cites studies showing that cities are warming 29% faster than rural areas — and that megacities like Delhi are heating up even faster. These heat pockets create a domino effect: hotter conditions push more people to use air conditioners, a burden disproportionately borne by low-income and marginalized communities who either lack access to cooling or live in cramped spaces and must work outdoors.
Scientific studies by IIT-Delhi show that temperature differences between urban and nearby rural areas can reach as high as 8.3°C due to urban heat islands.
The report further criticizes WTEs as essentially thermal power plants that convert heat energy from waste into electricity — but with very poor efficiency. While coal-fired plants operate at around 36% efficiency, WTEs manage only 18%, meaning most of the heat produced is wasted rather than converted into electricity.
Despite being projected as a silver bullet for Delhi’s waste and power needs, the combined power generation capacity of the four WTEs is just 40 MW — a mere 0.5% of Delhi’s peak demand. In contrast, decentralized rooftop solar systems contribute a substantial 197 MW to BSES.
The report concludes that the heat and chemical pollution from WTEs reinforce each other and affect the local microclimate. It calls WTEs an “electricity paradox” — they generate negligible electricity while simultaneously increasing power demand for cooling. In contrast, in countries like Sweden — often cited as a WTE success story — 90% of the energy generated is used for district heating, a use-case virtually non-existent in India.
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