Going green starts from the top, and in the Capital the President’s Estate is taking the lead. Besides lighting an entire auditorium wing with solar power, the Rashtrapati Bhavan is using cow dung-fuelled biogas in its kitchen for the President’s Bodyguards.
With 54 cows and 80 horses at the President’s Estate, biogas was an idea whose time had come — and since April, the President’s Bodyguards are eating food cooked from biogas, fueled by 600 kilos of cow dung every day.
A slight hitch came when many members of the bodyguards’ unit drew a line at eating food cooked on gas through horse dung. The solution: hundreds of kilos of horse manure generated daily are being used to create manure through an elaborate system — in 96 pits, mixed with earthworm imported especially from the US.
The earthworm, Eisenia Foetida, has a more voracious appetite than its Indian counterpart and has been bought at Rs 1,000 per kg to create manure,the staff said.
The idea, said Christy Fernandes, Secretary to the President, is to create a model carbon-neutral township. “Today, we think of the whole problem of climate change — we were wondering how we could tackle climate change on the urbane level,” Fernandes said. “The President’s Estate is a living heritage and we wanted to set an example.
“So we set up the biogas plant, at a cost of Rs 4.4 lakh, to better utilise what was being created in the Estate. We want to register this project for ISO 140001 environmental certification.”
Fernandes said only one kind of dung is used at the President’s Estate: “We use cow dung, and did not face any problems; more so because the cow is revered by everyone here.”
According to estimates, the four-month-old biogas plant saves 15 litres of kerosene, or 10.8 kg LPG, every day. The green initiatives have been called Roshini.
More recently, 50 MW solar power is feeding 100 streetlights and the auditorium of the President’s Estate that went solar. Fernandes said Piped Natural Gas (PNG) is also being used at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
