Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Thursday released a climate budget report focusing on sewage treatment, electric buses, air quality monitoring and urban green spaces, the third consecutive year it has done so.
Mumbai’s civic body, said to be India’s richest local body, had released the city’s first-ever Climate Budget Report on 5 June 2024, making Mumbai the first urban local body in India and the fourth city globally, after Oslo, London and New York City, to publish a dedicated climate budget.
Aimed at bringing the targets of the Mumbai Climate Action Plan into the municipal budgeting process, the report was prepared with technical support from WRI (World Resources Institute) India and C40 Cities, a global network of mayors.
This year, the BMC and its Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) undertaking, which runs Mumbai’s public buses and distributes electricity in some pockets, has set aside Rs 20,731.04 crore in capital expenditure and Rs 4,632.70 crore in revenue expenditure as part of its climate budget.
Last year, the BMC’s climate budget had an outlay of Rs 16,321 crore, and in its first year, it had an outlay of Rs 10,224 crore.
The climate budget is anchored in the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), published on 13 March 2022, which set a roadmap for the megacity to become net-zero and climate-resilient by 2050.
“The plan (MCAP) outlines strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen adaptation measures to address growing climate risks, in alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the budget document read.
What is MCAP?
Identifying five major climate risks for Mumbai—urban heat, urban flooding, air pollution, coastal risks and landslides—the MCAP lays out mitigation and adaptation measures across six priority sectors, including energy and buildings, transport, waste management, urban greening, air quality, and flooding and water resource management.
Its Climate and Air Pollution Risks and Vulnerability Assessment maps risk exposure and vulnerability at the ward level, taking into account physical environment, infrastructure and service gaps, and socio-economic factors.
The potential impacts assessed include early warning and communication gaps, rescue and recovery needs, quality of life, access to services and access to jobs.
The plan is organised across six priority sectors: Energy and Buildings, Integrated Mobility, Sustainable Waste Management, Urban Greening and Biodiversity, Air Quality, and Urban Flooding and Water Resource Management. These sectors together contain 24 action tracks, which now form the basis for mapping BMC and BEST budget heads.
Mumbai’s updated greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory for 2022-23 records total emissions of 24.56 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, with per capita emissions of 1.86 tonnes. Stationary energy, covering fixed energy infrastructure, systems, and consumption outside the transportation sector, remains the largest contributor at 74.5 per cent, followed by transport at 19.1 per cent and waste at 6.4 per cent.
According to the BMC Climate Budget Report for FY 2026-27, Mumbai is committed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, with interim targets of a 30 per cent reduction by 2030 and 44 per cent by 2040 against a 2019 baseline.
Objectives, processes and reviews of the past
The Climate Budget Report has five key objectives: to communicate Mumbai’s climate priorities through an official governance process, ensure implementation of MCAP recommendations, identify budget items that already align with the 24 action tracks across six MCAP sectors, examine existing civic budgets through a “climate lens”, track MCAP goals and targets annually, and identify projects that can attract external climate or green finance.
For FY 26-27, the budgeting process began in September 2025. It included 27 BMC departments and two BEST sections – electric supply and transport. The report laid out a six-step budgeting process: preparing a climate action plan (MCAP 2022), setting up a team involving the finance and environment departments, assessing existing municipal funding through a climate lens, integrating climate into the budgeting process, working with departments on budget proposals and climate impact assessment, and then using monitoring, evaluation and reporting to expand the scope of climate budgeting year-on-year.
For the first time, the BMC also piloted ward-level climate budgeting in four Zone II wards — G-North, G-South, F-North and F-South, to test how local vulnerabilities and ward-level priorities can be reflected in climate spending.
“To strengthen localized climate actions, a ward-level sensitization approach was adopted this year,” the budget report stated.
For 2025-26, BMC had set aside Rs 16,242.75 crore for climate-related works. Of this, Rs 12,654.54 crore was spent by 31 March 2026, showing 77.91 per cent financial progress. For other infrastructure projects that included MCAP-linked climate components, the utilisation was higher. Against a revised estimate of Rs 3,570.58 crore, BMC spent Rs 3,065.13 crore, or 85.84 per cent.
From the previous two climate budgets, on the ground, 143 activities were either completed, nearly completed or on track. Another 195 were partly completed and still ongoing, 42 were at the tender stage, 60 had only token budget provisions, and 19 were cancelled.
Climate measures
Nearly 87 per cent of the climate capital budget—Rs 18,080.01 crorehas been allotted towards Urban Flooding and Water Resource Management. This includes works related to flood-resilient infrastructure, sewage and wastewater management, water conservation, clean toilets, drinking water access and disaster-risk reduction.
Urban Greening and Biodiversity received Rs 1,369.36 crore, Sustainable Waste Management Rs 968.15 crore, Energy and Buildings Rs 156.67 crore, Air Quality Management Rs 90.85 crore and Integrated Mobility Rs 65 crore.
An additional Rs 5,387.49 crore has been set aside for large infrastructure and construction projects that include MCAP-linked components such as LED lighting, tree plantation and landscaping, rooftop solar systems and decentralised sewage treatment plants.
From the revenue budge, Rs 10.56 crore is also climate-aligned, mainly for biomedical waste bags and bins, tree census and bus fare concessions for persons with disabilities.
Among significant climate action plans are solid waste facilities in central Mumbai’s F-North ward. This includes dry-waste processing centres, a new waste segregation centre, technological upgrade of Mahalaxmi Refuse Transfer Station, waste-to-energy and biomining at Deonar, and dumpsite reclamation at Mulund.
Other measures include PNG connections at Mahalaxmi Dhobi-ghat, solar panel systems at peripheral hospitals, high-mast lighting upgrades, carbon cutter systems, renewable hybrid energy at Vaitarna Dam, solar power in new municipal buildings, LED lighting in civic schools and cleaner incinerators at the Deonar abattoir.
The report also lists several non-quantified but climate-relevant measures: 24 ward-level disaster management viewing centres, prefabricated and convenience toilets, wastewater treatment facilities at seven locations, Malad and Versova pumping stations, recycling and reuse of wastewater, urban forests, blue-green infrastructure, 100 battery-operated dust suction machines, 75 hyperlocal sensor-based air-quality monitoring points, mobile toilets, automated vehicle washing systems and the proposed central public park along the coastal road.
BEST budget
The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking’s climate budget remains provisional and subject to finalisation. The report estimates Rs 4,622 crore in climate-aligned operational expenditure, Rs one crore in capital expenditure and Rs 3,941 crore in subsidies under the deficit head.
For BEST’s electric supply section, the highlight in this report is the procurement of renewable energy for the electricity supply mix. For transport, the report lists wet-leasing of electric buses as a quantified action.
In 2026-27, BEST plans to procure 63 single-decker AC buses, 1,500 midi electric AC buses and 10 double-decker open-deck buses on wet lease, with an estimated annual emissions reduction of 12,601.04 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The report also states that BEST currently operates 2,787 buses, including 1,313 electric buses and 1,225 CNG buses on wet lease. It projects a fleet size of 11,425 buses by 31 March 2027, with 87.13 per cent electric, 10.72 per cent CNG and 2.14 per cent diesel.
Other BEST-linked climate measures include subsidised public transport to improve ridership, three locations with 14 EV charging stations, demand-side management to reduce peak electricity demand, LED street lighting and support for rooftop solar under the ‘Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana’. By March 2026, 645 consumers had rooftop solar systems installed, generating about 11.48 million kWh of renewable energy annually.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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