India sets out 2022 plan to beef up biofuels production

India has set out plans to boost its biofuels market over the next few years in an effort to beef up its energy security.

Blending 5% of biodiesel with regular diesel and 10% ethanol with gasoline could boost the market to 500 billion rupees (€6.7 billion) by 2022, from about 65 billion rupees now, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at an Indian conference on biofuels. India would require 6.75 billion litres of biodiesel and 4.5 billion litres of ethanol for blending over the six years, he said.

Shifting the fuel consumption profile to biofuels derived from domestic feed stocks would lead to decrease in this dependence on crude oil imports.

Pradhan said in the last two years, lot of work had been done with its ethanol blending programme, boosting biodiesel and developing waste-to-energy initiatives.

Big energy consumer

He said India’s energy consumption is increasing very fast and it has become the third largest consumer in the world.

Pradhan said that India’s biofuel programme has the capacity to provide better remuneration for farmers, address environmental concerns, reduce dependence on imports and help in foreign exchange savings. Pradhan also said the government is willing to provide conducive policy environment to support development of biofuel but import of raw material or waste for this purpose cannot be allowed. 

Speaking on the occasion, Minister of State for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines Piyush Goyal said that rapid strides have been made in the last two years in the field.

He said that Viability Gap Funding Scheme for the sector can be evolved in consultation with the stakeholders. Further, the Minister laid down a vision for the growth and development of the biofuel sector.

He called for organising an International competition, under the aegis of the MoPNG, MNRE and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), and invite stakeholders from all around the world to brainstorm and devise innovative technologies in the biofuels sector.

‘Speed and skill’

Goyal said speed, skill and scale are important for success of any programme and they should be included in the biofuel programme also.

He further added that biofuels are closely linked to increasing the quality of life of the “common man as they would provide a sustainable way to convert human generated wastes to energy and reduce pollution as well”. Goyal pointed out that a major challenge that faces the sector is the sustainable availability of feedstock for the biofuel generation plants. 

Investment announcements were made by private equity and public sector oil marketing companies. Indian Oil Corporation, BPC India, an engineering firm, and others, have identified ten locations for setting up second-generation ethanol plants.

India has taken several initiatives in the field of biofuels in the last two years. Several policy interventions and clearing of many hurdles in implementation of national blending targets have been under taken by Government of India.

India’s Ministry of Petroleum Natural Gas has given a big push for the ethanol blending programme and is close to achieving 4% blending during the current sugar year. The biodiesel blending programme which was started in August 2015 as a pilot in five cities has now been extended to six states. The government said blended biodiesel is now sold through nearly 2200 retail outlets in the country. The government has also allowed production of ethanol from alternate routes. 

This story was written by Liz Gyekye, editor of Biofuels International.