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G. Srinivasan

New Delhi , Aug. 17

AS the country faces the tough task of balancing its growing energy needs, the environmental damage from fossil energy sources and the energy security, a programme to produce bio-fuels that can be transport-fuel substitutes and blend them - ethanol with motor spirit and bio-diesel with high speed diesel (HSD) - is proposed by the Planning Commission.

The Plan panel's report on development of bio-fuel has proposed to undertake plantation of jatropha on four lakh hectares of wasteland, collect seed and process it at a cost of Rs 1,496 crore during the 10th Plan (2002-07).

The oil generated would be blended with diesel after trans-esterification to substitute imported diesel. It is estimated that petro-diesel demand by the end of the 10th Plan should be 52.33 million tonnes.

In order to achieve five per cent replacement of petro-diesel by bio-diesel by 2006-07, there is need to bring minimum 2.29 million hectares under jatropha curcas plantation.

A demonstration project could be taken up on four lakh hectares in eight States. Of this, two lakh hectares of plantation might be taken up on understocked forest lands in Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Tripura, and two lakh hectares of plantation on non-forest lands spread over UP, MP, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

The demonstration project would establish the feasibility of production of jatropha-based bio-diesel as a substitute for diesel and a source for energy security, particularly for rural areas.

In this process, output of 0.48 million metric tonnes of bio-diesel on a sustained basis would be achieved and 10.52 million metric tonnes of compost would also be produced.

Besides being a major pro-poor initiative generating massive income and employment for the poor and an active instrument of poverty alleviation, the mission would generate by 2007 cumulative employment of 124.4 million man-days in plantation and 36.8 million person-days in seed collection.

After the completion of the demonstration project, the next phase of the National Mission should be a self-sustaining expansion of plantation and setting up of corresponding facilities for seed collection, oil extraction, and trans-esterification.

The report said that the country should move towards the use of ethanol as substitute for motor spirit.

Though it is technically feasible to design and run automobiles on 100 per cent ethanol, for the reason of its limited availability and compatibility with vehicles currently in use, blending of ethanol with motor spirit needs to make a modest start to be raised to 10 per cent as capacity to produce anhydrous ethanol is built up.

According to the report, ethanol might be manufactured using molasses as the raw material. Industry should be encouraged to supplement the production of alcohol from molasses by producing alcohol from sugarcane juice directly in areas where cane is surplus.

For this purpose, restrictions on movement of molasses and putting up ethanol manufacturing plants might be removed, it said.

Imported ethanol should be subject to suitable duties so that domestically produced ethanol is not costlier than the imported ones. Buyback arrangement with oil companies for the uptake of anhydrous alcohol should be made.

To reduce the cost of production of ethanol, the Plan panel suggested steps including, among others, provision of incentives for new economic-sized distilleries incorporating modern technology such as molecular sieve technology for making anhydrous alcohol and integration of distillery with sugar plant to have multiple choice of making sugar, or direct sugarcane to ethanol.

Officials in the Plan panel told Business Line that the report on development of bio-fuel was presented to the Prime Minister, Mr A.B. Vajpayee.

The Ministry of Rural Development has been designated as the nodal agency for processing and taking further action on the report.

The project would have to be so processed for obtaining clearance of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), after which it would be launched, the sources added.

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Plan panel charts large-scale bio-fuel production plan

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