32,000 Trees, 3,000 MW and Maharashtra’s Energy Future: The Bhimashankar Power Project Explained
Maharashtra is witnessing another confrontation between infrastructure development and environmental conservation. The proposed felling of 32,490 trees for Torrent Power’s 3,000 MW Saidongar-Karjat pumped-storage project in Raigad has triggered protests, political criticism and questions about the ecological future of the Western Ghats. Local residents and environmental organisations fear the loss of forest cover and wildlife habitat, while the Maharashtra government presents the project as an important investment in the state’s electricity future. Reports that the Forest Department has temporarily halted tree felling have further intensified the controversy. Yet the public debate has concentrated so heavily on the proposed clearance of trees that the purpose and long-term significance of the project risk being overlooked.
Maharashtra is not an economy that can afford to treat reliable electricity as an afterthought. Its automobile plants, engineering industries, pharmaceutical manufacturers, commercial centres, hospitals, railway systems, technology businesses and farms all depend on an electricity network capable of meeting changing demand. Millions of households also expect reliable supply well beyond daylight hours. At the same time, the state wants to expand renewable energy, attract investment and strengthen its position as an industrial powerhouse.
Environmental concerns are neither imaginary nor irrelevant. Mature trees cannot be replaced overnight, forests sustain wildlife and communities living near the project deserve meaningful protection. But responsible public policy cannot evaluate a major electricity project by counting trees alone while ignoring the needs of millions of consumers who may benefit from it for decades. The central question is whether the project’s environmental costs can be minimised, lawfully managed and justified by its economic and energy-security benefits. That requires understanding what Saidongar will actually do, who stands to gain and why its location matters.
What Exactly Is the Bhimashankar Power Project?
The project is officially called the Saidongar-1 Karjat Pumped Storage Project and is being developed by Torrent Power. With planned investment of roughly ₹13,500 crore, it is designed for 3,000 MW of generating capacity over a six-hour discharge period, equivalent to approximately 18 million units of electricity from a full discharge cycle. Crucially, the project is not situated inside Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary. Official appraisal records place it approximately 15 to 16 kilometres away, outside the sanctuary and its notified eco-sensitive zone. This does not remove environmental obligations, but it corrects an important geographical misconception surrounding the controversy.
Pumped storage is best understood as a giant rechargeable battery built around two reservoirs at different elevations. When electricity is abundant or relatively inexpensive, pumps move water to the upper reservoir. When the grid requires additional supply, that water flows downhill through turbines to generate electricity. The pumping process consumes more power than the turbines subsequently return, so this is not a new source of net energy. Its value comes from making electricity available at the right time, especially when solar output falls and demand remains high. For an increasingly renewable-dependent electricity system, that flexibility is a practical necessity rather than a technological luxury.
Maharashtra’s Electricity Demand Is Growing Rapidly
The state’s Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Policy projects annual electricity demand rising from around 202 billion units in FY2024-25 to 350 to 360 billion units by FY2035-36. That is a projected increase of roughly three-quarters in little more than a decade. Expansion in manufacturing, urbanisation, digital infrastructure, transport electrification and domestic consumption will require investments not just in generation but also in transmission, distribution and storage. A strong industrial economy cannot rely on an electricity system designed only for yesterday’s demand.
This does not mean Maharashtra currently suffers from a permanent statewide power shortage. A state can have substantial installed generating capacity and still face periods when available electricity is costly or insufficient to meet demand. Power stations undergo maintenance, solar generation stops after sunset and wind output depends on weather conditions. What matters is not simply how much electricity can be produced over a year, but whether enough usable power is available at the hour it is required. Waiting for persistent shortages before building storage would make the eventual response slower and potentially more expensive.
Why the Real Challenge Begins After Sunset
Solar power is valuable during daylight hours, but the evening brings a familiar imbalance. Solar output declines just as households continue using lights, appliances and cooling systems, while businesses and essential services remain operational. Wind can help, but its generation is variable. Without enough flexible capacity, electricity systems may waste or curtail renewable generation at some hours and depend on expensive short-term purchases or fossil-fuel generation at others. Pumped storage addresses this mismatch by shifting electricity across the day, allowing surplus power to be stored as elevated water and released during the evening peak.
Maharashtra’s policy envisages approximately 20,000 MW of energy-storage capacity and 100 GWh of daily storage capability by FY2035-36. Saidongar’s 3,000 MW and approximately 18 GWh would represent a meaningful contribution to those targets. The larger point is that renewable generation and reliable storage must expand together. Building solar and wind facilities without the infrastructure needed to use their output effectively would weaken the very transition Maharashtra is pursuing.
Who Benefits? Not Just Torrent Power
One of the strongest facts supporting the project’s public importance is the long-term procurement arrangement already in place. Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited, or MSEDCL, has contracted 2,000 MW of Saidongar’s proposed 3,000 MW capacity for 40 years. That represents approximately two-thirds of the facility. The remaining 1,000 MW is intended for other buyers through future contracts or market arrangements. MSEDCL’s commitment shows that the project addresses an identified utility requirement rather than merely a speculative investment by a private developer.
The ultimate beneficiaries would be spread across Maharashtra’s interconnected electricity system. Households could benefit from more dependable evening supply, while factories and commercial establishments could gain from a grid better equipped to handle peak demand. Reliable power supports manufacturing schedules, cold-storage facilities, hospitals, transport and digital services. Farmers could benefit indirectly through overall grid reliability, although storage alone will not repair weak rural feeders or determine agricultural supply hours.
Torrent Power will earn revenue under its commercial agreements, and contractors will benefit from construction and equipment orders. The proper question is whether the service purchased by the public utility provides value to the consumers whose electricity needs it serves. A project need not be charitable to produce substantial public benefits, just as the existence of private profit does not remove the need for transparent tariffs, competitive procurement and regulatory supervision.
The Economic Case: Managing Expensive Peak-Hour Electricity
The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission considered the economics of pumped-storage procurement in its September 2024 order. Based on the assumptions examined at the time, the effective cost of Torrent’s storage electricity, including the cost of power used for pumping and storage losses, was estimated at approximately ₹6.80 per unit. The commission compared this with historical short-term peak-season procurement rates of roughly ₹7.44 to ₹7.90 per unit and found the competitively discovered storage tariff reasonable in the prevailing circumstances.
That comparison helps explain why MSEDCL would sign a long-term arrangement. When demand rises sharply, distribution utilities may have to purchase additional electricity at volatile market prices. Storage gives them the option of charging during lower-cost periods and drawing on that energy later, potentially reducing exposure to expensive emergency procurement. These benefits can support the financial stability of an electricity distributor and the competitiveness of businesses reliant on reliable supply.
The ₹6.80 estimate is not a guaranteed electricity price in 2029 or a promise that every household bill will fall. Actual economics will depend on charging costs, utilisation, contractual obligations and regulatory decisions. Nevertheless, the commission’s assessment provides a concrete financial rationale for the project. The debate is therefore not simply about accepting environmental damage in exchange for an abstract promise of development. It involves a specific storage service, an identified buyer and a regulatory examination of its potential value.
The Environmental Costs Cannot Be Dismissed
The proposed diversion of approximately 233 hectares of forest land and felling of 32,490 trees are serious environmental interventions. Forests help regulate water, stabilise soil and sustain biodiversity; excavation, blasting and construction traffic can disturb animals and neighbouring communities. An earlier project assessment referred to a higher estimate of roughly 48,000 trees requiring removal. Authorities should publicly reconcile that figure with the later felling permission and ensure the final extent of clearance is accurately disclosed.
At the same time, ecological assessments show that the project landscape is not uniform. Official inspection records describe parts of the upper-reservoir plateau as rocky and sparsely vegetated, while other areas, particularly near the lower reservoir, contain more substantial vegetation. Wildlife including leopards, sloth bears, pangolins, deer, birds and reptiles has been reported in the wider study area. That establishes a need for careful protection, but it is different from a measured census proving that every part of the specific construction footprint contains critical breeding habitat. A short official inspection reportedly found no evidence of large mammals or big cats at the lower-reservoir site during that visit, but a brief inspection cannot establish their permanent absence.
The distinction matters. Neither a list of species in a wider survey area nor the absence of sightings on a particular day is sufficient to settle questions about wildlife movement, habitat connectivity and long-term effects. Those questions require proper studies and enforceable safeguards. Environmental scrutiny should be rigorous, but it should also be precise, distinguishing verified impacts from claims that have not been demonstrated at the affected location.
Why Not Simply Build It Somewhere Else?
Relocation is an understandable suggestion, but pumped-storage projects require a demanding combination of geography and engineering. Suitable elevation differences, reservoir sites, water availability, geological stability, access roads and grid connections must exist together. Saidongar’s hilltop terrain, Pej River system and favourable rock formations help explain its selection. The planned lower reservoir is also intended to serve the separate Saidongar-2 Maval project, creating the possibility of shared infrastructure across a larger storage complex.
Torrent evaluated four configurations within the project landscape and selected the one that received the lowest weighted impact score under its assessment method. That is evidence of design comparison, but not proof that entirely different sites across Maharashtra were comprehensively ruled out. An alternative location could be viable, yet it might require fresh geological surveys, reservoir redesign, environmental clearances, transmission arrangements and substantial additional expenditure. It could also delay storage capacity already contracted by MSEDCL.
The sensible demand is therefore for a transparent comparison of realistic alternatives, not an assumption that moving a 3,000 MW facility is either impossible or effortless. If another site demonstrably offers comparable electricity benefits with significantly lower ecological cost, that evidence should be considered. If relocation adds major costs and years of delay without meaningfully reducing environmental harm, those consequences also belong in the assessment. Infrastructure decisions must compare actual options rather than an idealised project against an imagined impact-free alternative.
Mitigation Must Be a Condition of Development
Supporting Saidongar should mean holding its developer and regulators to demanding standards. Torrent has outlined compensatory afforestation and additional plantation plans involving approximately 90,000 trees, but saplings cannot instantly replace mature forest or complex habitats. The survival, ecological suitability and long-term maintenance of plantations must be monitored, rather than allowing plantation targets to become a public-relations substitute for conservation. Wildlife-management measures, watershed protection, slope stability, construction waste disposal and restoration of disturbed land need similar attention.
There is also room to minimise damage before it occurs. An official inspection committee recommended reviewing the width of access roads to reduce unnecessary forest diversion. Local communities must receive meaningful consultation, and statutory requirements concerning land, forest rights, water and rehabilitation must be fulfilled. A project that benefits millions should not disregard the lawful interests of the people living beside its reservoirs and construction routes.
The temporary halt in tree felling, if maintained while concerns are examined, can provide an opportunity to verify conditions and improve safeguards without assuming the entire development must be cancelled. Responsible construction is not the absence of environmental obligations. It is the disciplined implementation of those obligations, with independent monitoring and consequences for non-compliance.
What Is the Environmental Cost of Not Building Storage?
There is a wider environmental trade-off that deserves equal attention. As renewable generation expands, inadequate storage can force utilities to curtail usable solar or wind electricity and rely more heavily on conventional generation when demand peaks. Pumped storage does not create new net electricity, but when charged with relatively low-emission power it can reduce the need for some fossil-fuel-based peak generation. Torrent has projected substantial annual savings in coal consumption, air pollution and carbon emissions compared with a thermal-power alternative. These remain company estimates and depend on actual charging sources and operating patterns, not guaranteed environmental outcomes.
That distinction should encourage better measurement, not dismissal of the potential benefit. Forest loss imposes local costs; coal mining, thermal generation, air pollution and water consumption impose costs of their own. A responsible environmental comparison must examine both the footprint of the new facility and the consequences of the electricity supply arrangements it might replace.
A More Constructive Debate Than Protest Versus Progress
Residents and environmental groups have every right to challenge approvals, demand accurate tree counts and insist that wildlife and water concerns receive proper attention. Equally, the government and Torrent should be required to explain the storage requirement, the long-term contract, expected operating economics and the reasons for selecting this site. Public accountability becomes stronger when opposing arguments are tested against verifiable evidence instead of reducing every infrastructure dispute to political slogans or an automatic presumption of bad faith.
The same standard should apply to proposals for cancellation or relocation. What capacity would replace Saidongar’s contracted storage? How quickly could it be delivered, at what cost, and with what ecological footprint? Maharashtra needs both environmental scrutiny and a serious public discussion about the systems that will keep its economy supplied with electricity in the years ahead.
Maharashtra Needs the Courage to Build Responsibly
The proposed removal of more than 32,000 trees should never be treated casually. It requires transparent accounting, minimal clearance, meaningful community safeguards and enforceable conservation measures. But the planned 3,000 MW facility also carries a substantial public purpose. With two-thirds of its capacity contracted by MSEDCL for four decades, Saidongar could help Maharashtra manage evening demand, improve renewable-energy integration and reduce exposure to costly peak-hour power procurement. Its benefits would extend beyond Torrent Power to the households, industries and essential services served by the state’s electricity network.
Maharashtra cannot pursue industrial growth, greater electrification and ambitious renewable-energy targets while refusing to confront the infrastructure choices those ambitions require. Nor should development become an excuse to ignore forests or the communities that depend on them. The proper standard is whether a project delivers a necessary public benefit, whether reasonable alternatives have been assessed and whether environmental harm has been reduced as far as practicable. On that basis, Saidongar deserves serious consideration and stringent oversight, not judgment by a single headline number. The state’s energy future requires the willingness to build, and the discipline to build responsibly.
