An Assocham study has said that 35 crore litres of diesel worth Rs 1,400 crores were being consumed annually by industrial and commercial units in the national capital region (NCR) for generation of captive power to make up for the shortfall in supply of state-produced electricity. "There is an average power outage of 8 to 10 hours in the NCR which has forced industrial units to install multiple sets of diesel generators (DGs). These not only cause environmental. and sound pollution but also consume huge quantities of diesel which could otherwise be used for transport purposes," Assocham secretary general D.S. Rawat said. "They, however, have no choice since without running DGs, they cannot meet their production targets and will go economically unviable," he added. The study says that over 38,260 small, medium and large industrial units, including BPOs and IT companies, were operating in Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Meerut, Loni, Ballabhgarh and Bahadurgarh. Together, their DGs consume diesel worth Rs 117 crores per month. Releasing the assessment on Wednesday, Mr Rawat said that small units in the NCR, which number around 31,286, alone consumed diesel worth Rs 675.84 crores annually. Diesel worth Rs 386.24 crores and Rs 341.75 crores was consumed by the 4,600-odd medium and 2,374-odd large units, respectively.