The Hindu Business Line : Promoting biofuels

The National Policy on Biofuels, finalised after protracted deliberations among several ministries, recognises the importance of indigenous, non-polluting and virtually inexhaustible renewable energy resources. While fossil fuels would admittedly continue to play a dominant role in meeting the country’s energy needs well into the future, attention to biofuels reflects the policymakers’ desire not to overlook the environmental challenges posed by conventional fu els. Given emerging constraints on land and water as also the present unaffordable levels of food prices, the food versus fuel debate has assumed a more serious tenor than before. No wonder, the National Policy on Biofuels is based ‘solely on non-food feedstocks to be raised on degraded or wastelands that are not suited to agriculture’. The goal is to ensure mainstreaming of biofuels, with an indicative target of 20 per cent blending by the year 2017.

Without doubt, the policy is a wonderful statement of good intentions; but to attract investments in the biofuels sector, we need a lot more than that. The policy clearly lacks a coherent strategy to either mandate or popularise production and consumption of biofuels. There is little by way of assessment of financial, technological and marketing resources needed to make the policy a success. To start with, we need a national atlas of degraded and wastelands that are likely to be available for feedstock production, and absolute clarity on land lease or ownership policy. Biofuel projects will have to be long-term and therefore, land lease agreements will have to be valid for decades. State governments will have to play a supportive role in promoting biofuels. Sugarcane is still perceived as a food crop in India (rather than a fuel crop) and the cyclical nature of cane production is yet to be broken. Will ethanol manufacturers be permitted to extract it directly from cane, instead of from molasses as at present? Pricing and distribution issues are equally important, and there is little definiteness in the policy.

The feedstock for biodiesel will be non-edible oilseeds and oil-bearing material. Much has been talked about the potential of jatropha but the crop will take about four years to bear fruit, and for the country to see even modest quantities of the oil in the market. There is already a shortage of seeds for large-scale plantation. For a country that consumes 45 million tons of diesel, even a 5 per cent blend will translate to 2.2 million tons of biodiesel, which will require at least 2.2 million hectares of land. Where is this land? Biofuels are evocative in text books but cannot succeed without huge financial support. Technology is still evolving; and we may have to wait for perfection and commercialisation of cellulosic technology for ethanol to derive meaningful benefits.

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