A group of Swedish government officials and business players shared their ideas with the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal officials during a day-long workshop organised by Swedish Energy Agency, an umbrella organisation, on Tuesday, explaining how Sweden was successfully running 230 biogas plants and using fuel generated from solid waste for running vehicles.

Swedish ambassador to India Lars-Olof Lindgren, who led the delegation, said that the aim of their visit was to create a mutual understanding and to provide an opportunity for the Swedish participants to share their knowledge, technology and competence with a select Indian audience.

"This will lead to identification of opportunities and promising avenues for long term sustainable waste-to-energy solutions. Sweden has emerged as one of the world leaders in bio-energy based systems and India today has an ever-increasing need to convert waste to energy," Lindgren said.

Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale, who inaugurated the workshop, said the PMC would look for support from Sweden only after considering the financial viability of the projects. "Their technologies are good, but extremely expensive. We will certainly hold discussions with them to see if anything can be done in Pune, but what is most important for us is economic viability. How can we convince people if a project is way too expensive. Also, one must remember that their projects are running successfully only because 100 per cent waste is segregated at source which is not yet happening here," Bhosale said.

Baba Kalyani, CMD, Bharat Forge, who was present at the workshop, said waste management should be dealt in a manner of business proposition and should be done in an intelligent way keeping the future in mind. "The problem we face is real and, therefore, we need a real concept to solve it. Pune is an ideal place to set up a pilot project and we are keen to participate in the programme with Swedish officials," he said.

Stefan Dahlegram of Sweden Biogas Association said biogas can be used for several applications such as heat generation; to produce electricity and as vehicle fuel for cars, buses and trucks which is successfully being done in Sweden.

Representatives of the Swedish government said sustained efforts had been taken by the government and targets set by the parliament to reduce waste flow. "A ban was issued on land-fill sites, tax was laid on land-filling and also on burning fossil fuels. The municipalities took up the task of preparing waste management plans, set up local waste regulations, decided upon waste charges and spread information. A multi-pronged approach was taken up," an official said.