Pune doubles solar generation in a year but fails to improve air quality 

“A total of 1,66,513 kW solar power was generated in the city in 2024-25 as against 79,618 kW in 2023-24, which means it has doubled in a year,” said the report. The total power usage in the city was 72,99,888 kW, of which the maximum consumption was in residential areas with 54,44,847 kW.

The report stated solar panels generating 50,097 kW were installed in the city in the last one year and 61 per cent of this energy was used by residential buildings.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has also given a push to its energy conservation by increasing the LED smart street lights from 1,93,364 in 2023-24 to 2,13,770 in 2024-25 while saving electricity from 50 per cent to 56 percent.

The use of water heaters also increased from 72,821 in 2023-24 to 95,707 in 2024-25.

As per the ESR, Pune had only 52 good days and 137 satisfactory days of air quality in 2024-25 as against 79 good days and 145 satisfactory days in 2023-24. The very poor days and poor days increased from one to three while moderate days increased from 140 in 2023-24 to to 174  in 2024-25.

There was an addition of 3,02,760 new vehicles in 2024-25, which is an increase of over 10,000 from the previous year. Of the new vehicles. maximum were petrol vehicles  (1,87,664),  followed by 29,613 diesel vehicles, 19,457 are pure electric vehicles, 16,059 CNG only vehicles and the remaining are hybrid.

However, it could not reduce the use of traditional pyre for cremation as 44 percent of cremations in the city continued to take place with wood pyre while only 33 percent cremations were done in electric facilities and 23 percent in gas facilities in 2024-25.

Meanwhile, the PMC continued with its effort to tackle air pollution in the city by using environment friendly fuel run vehicles for public transport as 1,734 PMPML buses, including 1,244 CNG run buses and 490 electric buses, constitute the 88 per cent fleet of PMPML, which is helping reduce air pollution. Now, only 227 diesel buses are in the PMPML fleet. The report stated 490 electric buses have plied over 5 crore km and helped reduce 7,000 tonne of carbon emission.

The city received good rainfall of 1,311 mm last year as against 536.70mm in 2023-24 but there was an increase in maximum and minimum temperature in 2024-2025.

The maximum temperature increased to 41.8 degree Celsius in 2024-25 as against 41 degree Celsius in 2023-2024 while minimum temperature registered was 7.8 degree Celsius in 2024-2025 as against 7.4 degree Celsius in 2023-24.

Citizens getting affected due to vector-borne diseases were higher in 2024-25 as the city recorded 4,958 dengue patients and 485 chikungunya cases as against 3,377 dengue patients and 40 chikungunya cases in 2023-2024.

Incidentally, there was not a single malaria case registered in the city last year as against 11 in its previous year. The Covid cases also dropped from 3,235 in 2023-24 to 566 in 2024-25 while GBS cases were 198 in 2023-24 and 205 in 2024-2025.

It also stated that 85,133 stray dogs sterilisation was done since 2018 so the birthrate of stray dogs decreased by 42.87 percent.