Senseible

What does a micro, small or medium pharma unit in the Selaqui cluster near Dehradun emit in a year, in carbon dioxide (CO2), at today's factors?

On the 2015 unit figures of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a micro unit comes to about 459 tonnes of CO2 a year, a small unit about 1,065 and a medium unit about 2,989. Grid power is 87%, 86% and 77% of it. The medium unit's liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) use is far larger.

The three unit sizes in TERI's profile

What each size emits at today's factors

Where the medium unit stands out

A medium unit uses 2.5 times a small unit's electricity (3,406,800 / 1,362,720) but 14.1 times its LPG (163,636 / 11,571) and 1.8 times its diesel. The profile does not say why. It does say that the cluster's boilers, averaging 1 tonne of steam an hour and running 8 to 12 hours a day, are generally LPG or light diesel oil (LDO) fired, mostly without an air to fuel ratio controller, and that most units drain their condensate at 85 to 95 degrees Celsius, which it puts at 15 to 20% of the boiler's heat input.

So one flat emissions-per-tablet figure across sizes would hide this. In TERI's table, fuel is where a small and a medium unit differ most, and your own LPG and diesel invoices settle it.

Using the numbers

  1. Put your own twelve months of power bills, diesel slips and LPG invoices next to the row for your size.
  2. If your LPG is far from the row, check the cylinder or bulk tanker count before you check the boiler.
  3. Report your own totals with the factor and year used. Use the TERI row only as a benchmark.

Small unit, step by step

TERI's 2015 quantities with the grid factor for financial year (FY) 2025-26 from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) and Senseible's diesel factor. LPG at about 2.98 kg per kg is from the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defaults: 47.3 gigajoules per tonne x 63.1 kg per gigajoule is 2.985, which this page rounds to 2.98. HSD is taken at the diesel factor. The profile lists HSD and LDO together, so this is an estimate.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so a year of power, diesel and LPG bills gives you your own totals to set beside these. It does not measure boilers or read a profile report, and it is not a third-party verifier.

Sources: TERI, Cluster profile: Dehradun pharmaceutical industries (SAMEEEKSHA, 2015), 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, Chapter 1 Table 1.2 and Chapter 2 Table 2.2, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0 (FY 2025-26 grid factor)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. TERI's unit table is from 2015 and the profile prints no emission lines for unit sizes. Recheck the CEA grid factor for the year of your own bills.