India’s cement industry could replace more coal with waste fuel, but adoption hurdles remain

India’s cement industry could replace a much larger share of coal and petcoke with waste-derived fuel, but inadequate processing infrastructure, limited plant-level acceptance and uncertain pricing have kept adoption low, Fahim Sopariwala, chief executive of Green Gene Enviro Protection and Infrastructure Ltd (GGEPIL), said at the Mint Sustainability Summit & Awards 2026.

India generates about 70 million tonnes of municipal solid waste and 18.5 million tonnes of industrial hazardous waste, while about 3.5 million tonnes of industrial material requires landfilling, Sopariwala said. Conventional waste management relies on landfills and incineration, but co-processing offers an alternative by using pre-processed waste as fuel in power, cement and steel plants.

Traditionally, hazardous waste has been disposed off through landfills or incineration. Co-processing offers an alternative by treating waste as fuel after sorting, drying and blending it into a standardized product that can replace part of the coal or petcoke used by cement, power and steel plants.

The opportunity is particularly large in the cement industry. The thermal substitution rate (TSR)—the share of fossil fuel replaced by alternative fuel—remains below 5% in India, compared with global benchmarks of up to 90%, Sopariwala said. Some Indian cement plants, however, have reached about 40% TSR.

“A typical cement plant uses about 1,000 tonnes of coal or petcoke every day,” Sopariwala said. Alternative fuel produces less heat when burned—about 3,000-4,000 kilocalories compared with roughly 8,000 kilocalories from conventional fuel. As a result, plants need a larger quantity of alternative fuel to generate the same amount of heat. Even at a 50% substitution rate, each kiln could consume 300-400 tonnes of alternative fuel a day, he said.

Key bottlenecks

Unlocking this potential requires more than a steady supply of waste. Waste streams differ in their physical form and chemical composition, so they must first be sorted, dried, blended and formulated into a consistent fuel that cement plants can use.

Sopariwala said India’s low thermal substitution rate reflects inadequate processing infrastructure, manufacturers’ reluctance to use waste as fuel and the absence of clear pricing benchmarks against coal and petcoke.

GGEPIL processes different types of hazardous waste by shredding, drying, blending and formulating it into a standardized fuel.

“When we started this in 2013, pre-processing and co-processing were not legally recognised,” Sopariwala said. Co-processing was legally recognised in 2016, he added.

The company initially struggled to find cement plants willing to use the fuel.

“We had to actually go there, deploy our teams, feed the material into the cement manufacturing process, engage with them and train them,” Sopariwala said. At one plant, daily supply rose from 10-20 tonnes to 300-400 tonnes, he added.

Once cement plants are able to use alternative fuel safely and consistently, economics become a key driver of wider adoption.

Sopariwala said petcoke costs about ₹11,000 a tonne and coal about ₹8,000 a tonne, while the company's alternative fuel is priced at ₹4,000- ₹4,500 a tonne. Since alternative fuel generates less heat than conventional fuel, the more relevant comparison is the cost per kilocalorie. On that basis, the company's fuel is 30-40% cheaper than fossil fuels, he said.

Scaling up

The group works with about 10,000 industries across sectors including automobiles, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, engineering, textiles and wind energy, and supplies roughly 1,000 tonnes of alternative fuel a day to cement plants.

Its Karad, Maharashtra, facility uses automated storage for hazardous waste and tests every incoming waste stream to verify its physical and chemical properties before processing it into fuel, Sopariwala said.

The company is also working with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and other civic bodies to recover plastic from legacy dumps through biomining and convert it into refuse-derived fuel (RDF). Each plant generates about 400 tonnes of RDF a day, Sopariwala said.

Over the past 13 years, GGEPIL says it has saved 950,000 tonnes of fossil fuel and processed more than 1 million tonnes of industrial hazardous waste.