Facing mounting international pressure to cut emissions, India has expedited its efforts to harness renewable energy resources. After launching an ambitious programme for capacity addition in solar power generation, the government is preparing a comprehensive action plan to harness bio-energy resources.
Agriculture and forest residues, organic wastes, algae and seaweeds and grass are the main bio-resources which can be tapped as sources for different types of energy?power, gas, biofuels and biochemicals.
The action plan, the national bio-energy mission which is to be launched under the12th Plan, will address challenges in key areas like policy, regulation, logistics, availability of bio-energy resources and commercial viability. A draft report has been circulated. The government has asked the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to solicit industry feedback on the draft.
The CII held a bio-energy summit recently to deliberate over ways to deal with challenges that may be encountered in harnessing bio-energy resources. The government will take cognizance of the summit?s recommendations while finalising the draft paper.
?We will prepare a strategic vision paper containing recommendations by the summit, which will then be discussed with the ministry of new and renewable energy,? Pramod Chaudhari, co-chairman, CII national committee on renewable energy, told FE.
?Maintaining uninterrupted supply of biomass to projects is a big challenge as its availability varies through the year. Transportation is also an issue as biomass is puffy. Interventions will be required in areas like policy, regulations and technology,? Chaudhari said.
A big chunk of India’s population in rural areas still lacks access to affordable sources of energy. Biomass offers the prospect of improving energy accessibility to such people as it is available in abundance in such areas and can be easily harnessed for meeting local energy requirement. Accessibility to energy will help spur economic activity and lead to an increase in the income level in rural India.
According to government estimates, as much as 70% of the country’s population lives in villages and agriculture is their main source of livelihood. Of this, 30 crore people do not have access to commercial energy such as electricity and cooking gas. Energy deprivations are the highest for households belonging to the poorest strata with 93% of them depending on biomass for cooking and 62% living without access to electricity.
?A majority of these villages produce enough biomass as agricultural residues, which can be harnessed for production of commercial energy, including fuel, power and heat. Similarly, energy plantation in degraded wasteland can also significantly increase the contribution of biomass energy in the overall energy basket. As per a recent study, it has been observed that close to 50% of the biomass residue is not harvested due to various reasons. Even at this level of harvesting efficiency, it is possible to generate 7000 MW power based on various conversion technologies. With increased efficiency, the potential would further increase.
?Similarly, it has been estimated that 20,000 MW power can be generated from energy plantation by using parts of the waste land. Different distributed power generation models based on combustion and gassification technologies can help in the faster expansion of rural energy access…Every MW generated from such plants would be able to cover about 6,000 rural households. Thus, potentially 6 crore households, about 80% of the underserved population, can be provided energy access by accelerated development of biomass-based distributed power generation system,? says the draft paper prepared by the MNRE.