BALCO strives to a green future with its Biomass Briquettes

From reducing carbon emissions to using green concrete solutions for road
construction, BALCO has big plans for the future.

Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO), India’s iconic aluminium producer, and a subsidiary of Vedanta Aluminium Business, has taken some major steps for future sustainability. The company is now utilising 40-50 tonnes of biomass Briquettes per day for their thermal power and is increasing its utilization of biomass Briquettes more and more to discontinue its reliance over fossil fuel. This strong and effective initiative has the potential to reduce the GHG
emissions of CO2 by less than 4.3 lakh tonnes and has set a target to completely reach carbon neutral by 2050.

It’s a heavy promise but the directors have already set their goals to accept this challenge. Biomass Briquettes are made from agricultural residue which has heavy and serious negative impacts on the environment. On the other hand the energy output is very low; it varies between 3200kCal/kg and 4800kCal/kg. But for coal, the range is significantly higher, starting from 3000kCal/kg and going up to 8000kCal/kg for high-quality anthracite coal.

BALCO realises these issues and a certain number of steps are taken to ensure these needs. Pulkit Saxena, Director of Bhoomi Agro Produce Pvt. Ltd., which is supplying biomass briquettes to BALCO, said, “I would like to congratulate BALCO and its team members for their commendable efforts to use biomass briquettes for lowering coal usage. The use of such green fuels will have a positive impact on the environment as well as to the agro-waste value chain,
which includes small and marginal farmers. Such an initiative by a climate-conscious organization like BALCO will set an example for others too. We are proud to be their partners in this environment friendly initiative.”

This project will ensure two important environmental motives at the same time. One is reduction of Agricultural waste as it’s being utilised and two is reducing the use of fossil fuels for industrial purpose.

Working towards its ESG ( Environment, Social and Governance ) goals, BALCO has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) Nagpur to create green concrete solutions for road building. This alone is a brilliant and innovative approach to meet the needs of time and that too in a sustainable way possible. To set a goal of total fly ash (a by-product of thermal power generation using coal)
utilization, BALCO is also supplying conditioned fly ash through rakes to cement manufacturers.

It’s really incredible that the message is clear that the need of a sustainable future is inevitable
and clearly many important sectors are joining hands to bring this change possible.