# Coimbatore's bakeries burn LPG, wood and diesel: what should a bakery record?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/coimbatore-bakery-cluster-fuels-carbon

Four things: LPG in kg, oven diesel in litres, wood in tonnes and the monthly power bill. Across Coimbatore's 700 or so bakeries wood is close to half the energy but biogenic; LPG and diesel make up over half of the fossil CO2, roughly 11,300 t a year in all.

## Who bakes on what

- Over 700 bakeries, about 370 in the city; 95% are micro or small.
- Most bake in the back and sell in the front; standalone units supply shops.
- Standalone units mostly fire diesel ovens with mono-block burners of 5 to 8 litres an hour; retail bakeries use wood fired brick ovens; a few use electric ovens.
- A micro or small bakery uses about 15 toe a year, a medium one about 33.

## The records

1. LPG: kg from each bill, not cylinder count alone.
2. Diesel: litres bought for the oven, separate from any generator.
3. Wood: tonnes bought, on a biogenic line of its own.
4. Electricity: kWh from each month's bill.
5. Output: you likely count pieces, so weigh a tray of each product once and convert to kg.

## Oven fixes

- Recuperative burners in place of mono-block burners that keep blowing air after the fuel cuts off.
- Wood ovens: bake bread at 250 C, then use the falling heat for cakes at 180 C.
- Thyristor control on electric ovens: 7 to 15%.
- Steel mesh trays in place of heavy mild steel plates, which are about 90% of a trolley's weight: 5 to 10%.
- A wood gasifier: up to 50% less wood.

## The average bakery and the cluster (estimate)

- Cluster: 7.0 million kWh, 1,140 kL diesel, 1,200 t LPG, 9,000 t wood a year
- Per bakery (divided by 700): 10,000 kWh x 0.675 = 6.8 t; 1,629 L diesel x 2.645 = 4.3 t; 1,714 kg LPG x 2.98 = 5.1 t
- Fossil total about 16.2 t a year; 12.9 t of wood gives about 22.5 t biogenic CO2, reported separately
- Cluster fossil CO2: 4,725 + 3,015 + 3,576 = about 11,300 t

Energy from TERI's cluster profile of Coimbatore bakeries (2015-16). A cluster average; a wood oven shop and a diesel oven plant look very different.

## What Senseible does here

The calculators take your LPG, diesel and kWh and give the fossil figure; Senseible can read those bills each month so you are not adding them by hand.

- [Carbon calculators](https://senseible.earth/calculators)
- [Bakery oven CO2 per kg of bread](https://senseible.earth/answers/bakery-oven-emissions-per-kg-bread)
- [Biomass gasifier vs LPG](https://senseible.earth/answers/biomass-gasifier-vs-lpg-furnace-emissions)

Sources: [TERI, Cluster profile: Coimbatore bakery industries](https://sameeeksha.org/pdf/clusterprofile/coimbatore-bakery-industries.pdf), [SAMEEEKSHA, Coimbatore bakery industries cluster summary](https://sameeeksha.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209&Itemid=502), [GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (biogenic CO2 reported separately)](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard), [IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel emission factors)](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html), [CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector (grid factor 0.675 kg CO2 per kWh, FY 2025-26)](https://cea.nic.in/cdm-co2-baseline-view?mappingId=234&lang=en)

Last reviewed 2026-10-31.