Important to explore renewable sources of energy: Dharmendra Pradhan
New Delhi: European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy and India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has jointly organized a conference on EU-India Conference on Advanced BioFuels.
The objective of this conference is to facilitate the deployment of advanced renewable fuels in EU and India through technology innovation, knowledge sharing, capacity building, trade and investment and project establishment.
It will primarily be aimed at technology developers, industry representatives and investors in value chains producing low carbon fuels for the de-carbonization of transport in European countries and India.
Dharmendra Pradhan , petroleum and natural gas minister, while giving an inaugural speech said that India being the third largest economy in the World is growing rapidly both in terms of population and GDP.
On one hand demand for energy is increasing rapidly and on the other hand fossil fuel being a non-renewable resource its supply is limited therefore it is necessary to use them prudently.
He said it’s an urgent need of an hour to explore alternative renewable sources of energy and to create favorable environment for further utilization.
He further said “Narendra Modi set industrial targets for energy imports reduction by at-least 10% by 2022”.
Speaking on the occasion he said, Biofuels from conventional roots may not be sufficient to meet the desired targets while advanced biofuels from other non-conventional roots such as crop residue, municipal solid waste, waste gases can be useful in achieving the desired results.
India has already taken various initiatives to promote biofuels and advanced biofuels.
To enhance biofuels blending in petrol, government has decided to allow the procurement of ethanol produced from other non-field stocks.
India is setting up commercial plants based on Advanced biofuel, in this process oil PSUs setting up 12 second generation ethanol bio-refineries’ in the country. These bio-refineries will be based on new technology which converts any crop residue or biofuel into ethanol.
Such Projects that convert waste into wealth will provide clean energy as well as remuneration to farmers for waste residue, also generate direct or indirect employment in rural areas and also address environmental concerns.
He further highlighted the various concerns and issues of the Advanced Biofuel emerging sectors and laid emphasis on various other Ministries like Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of environment and forest and Ministry of panchayati raj to play a crucial role in this direction.
To address all these challenges and for better cooperation Ministry of Petroleum and natural gas has developed a new national policy for bio-fuel which will create conducive environment for research, development, production and marketing of Bio-fuels.
In this direction finance minister initiated a program called “gobardhan”.
The entire crux of the conference is to encourage potential investors to take up projects that will convert waste into wealth for energy generation, for this government will lend its full support in financial terms.
He said “more than 1 lakh crore business opportunities is available in waste to wealth industry”.
Source: knnindia.co.in
