How much energy do Gokak jaggery units use, and what CO2 is counted if bagasse is the fuel?

Bagasse supplies about 99% of the 34,735 toe Gokak's 120 or so jaggery units used in 2017-18, and its CO2 is biogenic. What counts as fossil is the grid power and generator diesel: 3.13 million kWh and 66.3 kL, about 2,290 t CO2 a year (estimate).

The cluster

• 95 micro units making jaggery with sugar: 28,500 t a year.
• 15 small units making jaggery with sugar: 13,500 t.
• 10 small units making jaggery without sugar: 2,700 t.
• Cane comes from farms in Belgaum and Gokak; sugar from mills in Belgaum, Gokak, Hubli and Kolhapur. About 1.5 to 2 t of cane goes into each pan.

Inside one unit

A micro unit uses about 18,461 kWh, 460 t of bagasse and 500 litres of diesel a year; a small unit 55,384 kWh, 1,380 t and 750 litres. The crusher, usually two motors of about 15 hp, runs on the grid, mostly LT connections of 40 to 60 hp; the generator stands by for power cuts. Bagasse from the crusher is dried, by a dryer in small units and in the sun in micro units, then burnt under open iron pans 230 to 280 cm across.

Three lines for a buyer

1. Fossil CO2: grid kWh and diesel litres. This is your Scope 1 and 2.
2. Biogenic CO2 from bagasse, on its own line, with tonnes burnt.
3. Sugar bought in, for jaggery with sugar: it carries the sugar mill's footprint, so send kg of sugar per tonne of jaggery.

Where TERI saw savings

• Variable speed drive on the crusher motors, which run at varying load: 10 to 15% of their power.
• Replacing motors rewound three or more times with IE3 motors.
• Rooftop solar on the units' large roofs; the profile notes that Karnataka allows net metering.
• Waste heat recovery from the open pan furnaces, so less bagasse is burnt per pan.

Gokak, fossil CO2 (estimate)

• Cluster: 3.13 million kWh x 0.675 = 2,113 t, plus 66.3 kL x 2,645 kg = 175 t: about 2,290 t
• Per tonne of jaggery: 2,290 / 44,700 = about 51 kg CO2
• Micro unit: 18,461 kWh x 0.675 = 12.5 t, plus 500 L x 2.645 = 1.3 t: 13.8 t for about 300 t, or 46 kg per tonne
• Bagasse, reported separately: 78,200 t at 3,000 to 4,000 kcal per kg x 100 kg CO2 per GJ = about 98,000 to 131,000 t biogenic

Energy and output from TERI's Gokak jaggery profile (2017-18). TERI printed 2,742 t on an older grid factor. Bagasse at the profile's calorific range and the IPCC 2006 default for other solid biomass.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the unit's power bills and diesel slips into a Scope 1 and 2 figure in minutes; it applies no factor to bagasse, so the biogenic line stays yours to report.

• Your MSME carbon number
• Jaggery carbon footprint per kg
• Biomass fuel in a boiler and Scope 1

Sources: TERI, Energy profile: Gokak jaggery cluster (SAMEEEKSHA, 2017-18 data), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0

Last reviewed 2026-10-31.