The Hindu Business Line : Plea to set up renewable energy research centre for bio-fuels

HIGHLIGHTING the huge potential for bio-fuels for automobiles in the country owing to widely-cultivated high ethanol-yielding crops such as sugarcane, corn and wheat, experts at the International Knowledge Millennium Conference (IKMC-2004) held here suggested setting up of an All-India Renewable Energy Research Centre to effectively exploit the potential in the area of bio-fuels.

Speaking at the valedictory session of the conference here, Dr Jay K. Shetty, a scientist holding over 35 patents, currently acting as Senior Director at the US-based Genencor International Inc, said exploiting the bio-fuels potential would not only lower the country's dependence on imported oil but also enable it to address issues of trade balance and supply of electric energy to the public grid.

On the social front, bio-fuels production would have the potential to create large number of jobs covering nearly 10 per cent of the country's population, especially in rural areas with low investment per job and also promote local farming and is environmentally friendly.

Pointing out that the annual petrol consumption in the country currently stands at 6.5 billion litres at a cost of Rs 4,00,000 crore with an annual growth rate of five per cent, Dr Shetty said the country requires 650 million litres of fuel-grade alcohol at 10 per cent blending. However, the country is currently producing only around 300 million litres of fuel grade alcohol, of a total of 1.5 billion litres of alcohol production. It requires an additional 400 million litres of fuel grade alcohol and one million tonne of grain, he said.

Dr Shetty said India is one of the largest producers of sugarcane in the world and has more than 400 distilleries producing alcohol by using molasses. It has surplus capacity for alcohol production and was also blessed with the cheapest carbon source for bio-refinery.

Speaking on the challenges of affordable diagnostics technology for healthcare, the Founder of the US-based ReaMetrix Inc and a renowned scientist, Dr Bala S. Manian, stressed on the relevance of local solutions suiting local conditions to address the mass market needs. According to him, the technology focus in India should be on eliminating human error and not human labour in view of the cheap labour costs.

Stressing on the unique opportunity to make a fundamental paradigm shift in human diagnostics, he urged the industry to use labour cost arbitrage to create value arbitrage.

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