India dreams big on biofuel but can it deliver?

India’s drive to ramp up biofuels use within a decade offers hope to a struggling biodiesel sector, but without a clear roadmap, commercial production will remain years away, a top trade official said.

India agreed on Thursday to lift biofuel blending to 20 percent by 2017, worrying some analysts who fear it may be at the expense of food output but who say it offers a way to trim the country’s hefty fuel import bill.
But a simple target was no substitute for a detailed policy framework, Sandeep Chaturvedi, president of the Biodiesel Association of India, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.

“There is at least a couple of years to go before we can produce biodiesel in a commercial way — that, too, only if we have a clear mandate right now in the policy,” Chaturvedi said.

India imports 70 percent of the oil it consumes and has already asked oil firms to mix ethanol with petrol to 5 percent of volume almost nationwide.

Reuters