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India to unveil bio-fuel policy in March

By IANS

New Delhi : Indian government will come out with a policy on bio-fuels by the first week of March, Minister for New and Renewable Energy Vilas Muttemwar said here Friday.

“The government will announce a policy on bio-fuels in the first week of March,” Muttemwar said on the sidelines of a two-day national convention on bio-diesel organised by Biodiesel Association of India (BDAI), a body representing the bio-fuel industry.

A group of ministers (GoM) on bio-fuels headed by Agriculture Minister Shard Pawar, mandated to recommend policy guidelines for promoting use of bio-fuels, failed to meet as scheduled on Jan 29.

BDAI says absence of a policy is hampering growth of the bio-diesel industry.

“Farmers are reluctant to undertake plantation of jatropha on a large scale to meet the feedstock requirement of bio-diesel plants in the absence of policy guidelines from the central government,” BDAI president said.

Most of the bio-diesel plants in India use jatropha oil as a feedstock for producing bio-diesel.

“Bio-diesel plants are unable to run at their rated capacities due to feedstock shortage,” said Sandeep Chaturvedi, president, BDAI.

“Through this conference, we aim to seek policy initiatives by government and support from private organisations, to drive the bio-diesel movement in different sectors,” Chaturvedi said.

Chairing the convention, Raghuvansh Prasad, minister for rural development, who along with Muttemwar is in the GoM on bio-fuels, reiterated his ministry’s support for bio-fuels, which he described as the energy of the future.

“We should do the maximum to promote bio-fuels without any further delay,” Prasad said.

“Thirty million hectares of wasteland is available, which can be effectively used for the cultivation of Jatropha and similar crops to produce bio-fuel for substituting fossil fuels,” the minister said.