According to biomass assessment surveys, surplus crop residue availability in India is in the range of 50-60 million tonne annually. According to these reports, by 2020, the available biomass residue could in theory be converted into 10-15 billion liters of second generation ethanol annually, sufficient to meet 20 per cent ethanol blending mandate in India. Government to set up 12 2G-Ethanol plant across 11 States including Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The estimated investment for the 12 bio-refineries is pegged at Rs 10,000 crore.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the country’s largest fuel retailer, is planning to set up a biomass-based second generation ethanol production facility at its flagship Panipat refinery at a cost of over Rs 700 crore. The proposed plant will utilize non-food biomass, mainly rice straw and other ligno-cellulosic feed stock, requiring around 473 tonne of raw material every day.
India’s national biofuel policy released last year had set an indicative target of 20 per cent blending of ethanol in petrol and 5 per cent blending of biodiesel in diesel to be achieved by 2030. The country’s total petrol consumption is expected to reach 381 billion litre by 2020 of which 20 per cent can be replaced by bio-ethanol produced from lignocellulose raw materials, the company said. This replacement of petrol is likely to lead to foreign exchange savings in a range between $8 billion and 10 billion every year.
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