India’s biodiesel chief says China pulling ahead, blames government disarray on policy

In India, the head of the country’s national biodiesel association said that the lack of a national policy has put India behind China in biodiesel development.

Sandeep Chaturvedi, head of the Biodiesel Association of India, said that disagreements between ministries over subsidies have stranded existing oilseed plants with the capacity to handle 1.2 million tonnes of jatropha, and stymied future investment. India consumes 4.5 times as much diesel, 40 million tonnes, as gasoline, and said in 2003 that it would use a B5 jatropha blend in petroleum diesel to reduce imports. The Biodiesel Association of India (BDAI) recently called on the central government to place biodiesel in the “declared goods” category so that it will receive a uniform rate of taxation throughout the country.

The BDAI had also called on the government to encourage the use of B20 blends and exempt biodiesel used in those blends from taxation. Meanwhile, the president of the BDAI, Sandeep Chaturvedi, said that the industry faces a feedstock shortage and is not utilizing full production capacity. At other times, BDAI has proposed a B5 mandate, a price reduction from the current $2.54 level, and a 30 percent subsidy on jatropha cultivation.
Meanwhile, an Indian group of ministers meeting is expected, as soon as March, to propose a mandatory B20 blending standard. India’s government is struggling to plan for enough energy to sustain the country on an 8-9 percent growth rate over the next 25 years, which will require a quadrupling of energy supply.

Until now, although India has been a leader in jatropha-based research, most Indian biofuels activity has been on the ethanol side, although D1 Williamson Magor Biofuels announced that it would invest $89 million in jatropha plantations and a biodiesel plant, with an eventual ambition of a 55,000 hectare jatropha plantation in eastern India.

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