India pushes alternative
fuels By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Though oil prices have settled
down a bit, a serious attempt is being made to
push alternative energies, to meet future
contingencies. India produced 32 million tons of
crude oil and imported nearly 99 million tons,
which is nearly 80% of its requirement in 2005-06.
India has scaled up its estimate of power
requirements to between 800,000 and 950,000
megawatts by 2030 to achieve the targeted economic
growth of more than 8%. The choices China
and
India make in the next few years will lead the
world on a path based on efficient technologies or
growing ecological instability, the US-based World
Watch Institute in its State of the World 2006
report has said.
Recently, the Indian
minister for non-conventional energy sources,
Vilas Muttemwar, said in parliament that US and
German companies have made investment proposals
worth Rs100 billion (US$2.1 billion) in a special
economic zone (SEZ) for manufacturing renewable
energy devices and systems. "Very soon we will
identify the location for setting up the SEZ. We
are studying locations in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh,''
the minister said.
Extending support to
alternative energy sources, Rural Development
Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said India can
save Rs95 billion each year from bio-diesel
produced from jatropha, an oilseed plant. The
National Oilseeds and Vegetable Oils Development
(NOVOD) board, the designated agency of the farm
ministry to promote biofuel crops, has projected
3.1-million-hectare coverage under jatropha
plantation by 2008-09, he said.
NOVOD has
estimated that the said acreage would produce
about 3 million tons of bio-diesel (at the rate of
0.94 ton per hectare) annually. "This would result
in a likely saving of foreign-exchange equivalent
to about Rs95 billion,'' the minister said.
So as not to hurt the country's
agriculture produce, the government has identified
43 million hectares of available cultivable
wastelands, of which 32 million hectares would be
suitable for jatropha plantation.
Echoing
similar sentiments, Agriculture Minister Sharad
Pawar has said that India will soon launch a
special mission to promote cultivation of
non-edible oilseeds as well as other biofuel
crops. "This mission would comprise 14 central
ministries involved in the promotion of biofuels
and state governments,'' Pawar said.
Emphasizing the need for making biofuel
cultivation economically viable for farmers as an
alternative crop, Pawar said the Agriculture
Ministry has been playing an active role in
including constituting the NOVOD board to
undertake research and popularization of
non-edible oilseeds such as jatropha and karanja.
[1]
Private-sector giant Reliance
Industries Ltd has set aside $500 million to set
up a bio-diesel-refining plant and earmarked 200
hectares of land at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh as
a pilot project to cultivate jatropha shrubs. The
plant is expected to be ready by 2008 near the
existing 33-million-ton-per-annum crude-oil
refinery at Jamnagar, Gujarat.
In a first,
two trains in India have recently started running
on bio-diesel derived from jatropha. The two
narrow-gauge trains in the state of Chhattisgarh
travel 300 kilometers a day.
"The
experiment is proving to be a great success, and
the engines are working smoother and are
jerk-free,'' said a railway spokesperson.
And, as an example, chief minister of the
central state of Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh, who
has set upon the task of growing jatropha with a
missionary zeal, became the first head of a state
government to use jatropha diesel for his official
vehicle. The state government also plans to
replace imported diesel with jatropha fuel for all
state-owned vehicles by next year.
Another
area of focus has been wind energy. The Global
Wind Energy Outlook 2006 report, by the Global
Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International,
provides an industry blueprint that explains how
wind power could supply 34% of the world's
electricity by 2050.
Suzlon Energy, a
home-grown Indian company, dominates the Indian
market and is expanding rapidly abroad, having
erected factories in locations as far away as
Pipestone, Minnesota, and Tianjin, China.
Four-fifths of the orders to Suzlon now come from
outside India. Not on the list of the world's top
10 wind-turbine manufacturers as recently as 2002,
Suzlon overtook Siemens of Germany last year to
become the fifth-largest producer by installed
megawatts of capacity.
This year,
Pune-based Suzlon acquired for $600 million a
Belgian company that makes gears for windmills.
Tulsi Tanti, the chairman of Suzlon
Energy, has said that China is a promising market.
The $60 million investment that Suzlon is making
in its China factory is the first by an Indian
company in the Chinese energy sector and one of
the largest by any Indian firm in China.
Suzlon Energy has also decided to set up a
100MW farm project near Udupi, Karnataka. The
company will spend Rs4 billion of the Rs14.96
billion raised through an initial public offering
in September 2005.
Suzlon still trails the
market leader, Vestas Wind Systems of Denmark, as
well as General Electric, Enercon of Germany and
Gamesa Tecnolgica of Spain. However, Suzlon's
rapid growth showcases how a company can prosper
by tackling the special needs of a developing
country.
In the mid-1990s, the wind-energy
business was seen as uncertain because of the
predominance of fossil fuels. With oil prices,
rising this is no longer the case.
India
is well positioned to reap the benefits of the
wind boom. The country's monsoon winds,
particularly the southwest monsoon, which provides
80% of the wind-energy generation potential,
contribute to a current annual power production of
about 4,300MW from wind projects, standing fourth
in the world behind Germany, Spain and the United
States.
The Ministry of Non-conventional
Energy foresees added capacity of 5,000MW from
wind by 2012. India is seen not only as the
largest market for wind energy in the Asia-Pacific
region, but also as a manufacturing hub for wind
turbines and related parts and equipment.
Recently, Vestas announced it was
investing Rs5 billion to set up wind farms in
Maharashtra. At the outset, it acquired more than
485 hectares of land in Dhule district, with
infrastructure development for an installed
wind-energy capacity of more than 100MW to
commence soon. The company has also acquired land
in Sourashtra and Kutch regions of Gujarat, and an
investment of more than Rs9 billion is envisaged
during 2006-08.
Vestas also plans to
establish a research base in Singapore to meet
Asia's growing appetite for such energy supplies.
The company will invest up to US$322 million over
the next 10 years to set up the wind-technology
research and development center.
However,
much more needs to be done. The Indian government
should grant a 10-year exemption of excise and
customs duties as well as federal and state levies
on bio-diesel or jatropha oil to encourage
large-scale corporate plantation and reduce
India's massive crude-oil import bill, the
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry said recently.
Note 1. Jatropha
curcas is a species of plant indignenous to
the Carribbean and brought to the subcontinent by
Portuguese traders. Karanja belongs to the genus
Pongamia.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based
journalist.
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