India increases biofuel production
With 135 million litres of ethanol being manufactured from six sugar factories in India it looks like the country’s production of biofuels is on the up.
The ethanol is blended with petrol in order to comply with India’s 10% ethanol target by the end of 2011. According to the state’s Biofuel Task Force president Y B Ramakrishna, ‘There is a target of increasing the use of ethanol to 10% in the state by the end of next year.’ He says that 7.5% of the ethanol is mixed with diesel and fuels around 2,000 buses.
However India’s dependency on diesel is still high. In order to lessen its reliance on fossil fuels energy crops are being grown on land that is not being used to cultivate food crops. The country has been growing these crops on 6,000 hectares on land since 2009 but it is hoped this will increase to 25,000 hectares between 2010 and 2011. Village Forest committees will preserve the plantations and the farmers will be encouraged to grow the energy crops on parts of their land where they don’t grow agricultural crops.
Ramakrishna has asked the Forest department officials to take advantage of the non-agricultural land across the Kodagu district and use it grow biofuels plants. ‘There is much scope for growing biofuel plants in the state,’ he said. With this in mind biofuels manufacturing facilities are being opened in many locations around India. There are also plans to purchase fuel seeds from the farmers through Raita Samparka Kendras.
The ethanol is blended with petrol in order to comply with India’s 10% ethanol target by the end of 2011. According to the state’s Biofuel Task Force president Y B Ramakrishna, ‘There is a target of increasing the use of ethanol to 10% in the state by the end of next year.’ He says that 7.5% of the ethanol is mixed with diesel and fuels around 2,000 buses.
However India’s dependency on diesel is still high. In order to lessen its reliance on fossil fuels energy crops are being grown on land that is not being used to cultivate food crops. The country has been growing these crops on 6,000 hectares on land since 2009 but it is hoped this will increase to 25,000 hectares between 2010 and 2011. Village Forest committees will preserve the plantations and the farmers will be encouraged to grow the energy crops on parts of their land where they don’t grow agricultural crops.
Ramakrishna has asked the Forest department officials to take advantage of the non-agricultural land across the Kodagu district and use it grow biofuels plants. ‘There is much scope for growing biofuel plants in the state,’ he said. With this in mind biofuels manufacturing facilities are being opened in many locations around India. There are also plans to purchase fuel seeds from the farmers through Raita Samparka Kendras.
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