Press Release

4th International Biofuels Conference (Feb 1-2, 2007)
Kicks off in New Delhi

“For the next 25 years, if India is to support the growth rate of 8%, the country has to vigorously explore the scope of biofuels”, said Shri M.V. Rajasekharan, Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Planning, Government of India while inaugurating the 4th International Biofuels Conference in New Delhi organized by Winrock International India.  Quoting from the Approach Paper to the 11th Fiver Year Plan and the Hon’ble President Dr. Kalam’s vision statement, the Minister pointed out that India was already moving on the path of promoting biofuels and, apart from the centre, many states had taken progressive steps in this direction.  The new biofuels policy announced by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy looked at critical factors like decentralized energy supply, local  energy generation and promotion of environment friendly clean technologies so as to move towards the target of biofuels contributing 10% of the total energy needs by 2012.  The minister made special mention of the power scenario in rural India and hoped that biofuels could help fill the gap between supply and demand.

The Inaugural session was also addressed by Shri Om Prakash, Secretary, Forests & Environment, Government of Uttarakhand, a state that has a forward looking approach to promotion of biofuels.  The Secretary highlighted the fact that Uttarakhand state had a natural advantage in terms of availability of biomass and was focusing on forestry based employment generation.  He mentioned that a large part of degraded forest land had been earmarked for biofuel plantation which would provide employment to 1 lakh people.  The newly established Uttarakhand Biofuel Board was the nodal agency in the state responsible for promoting biofuels use, identifying the direct beneficiaries and for creating an enabling environment.  He was hopeful that in the agriculture sector also, organic manure would gradually replace use of chemical fertilizer.

Other speakers who spoke at the Inaugural session, included:
Mr. Sam Bob, Executive Director, PCRA and Mrs. Pushpa Sundar, Chairperson, Board of Governors, Winrock International India, who gave the Welcome Address. Mr. Amit Kumar, Program Manager, Winrock International India closed the session with a Vote of Thanks.

The conference was supported by a number of stakeholders and was attended by more than 450 delegates. One of the major highlights of the conference was a large delegation from Canada led by Dr. Arthur Carty, the National Science Advisor to Government of Canada, who also spoke at the inaugural session.

The conference brought together various international and national experts, who presented their papers to share their experiences.  The international participants came from countries like Germany, Canada, US, Netherlands and Switzerland.  They represented a range of financing and banking institutions; technology suppliers / developers; central and state ministries and agencies; petroleum, sugar and alcohol / ethanol industries; edible and non-edible oil industry; automobile industry; NGOS and micro-finance institutions (MFIs); chemicals and petrochemicals industry; and management advisors and entrepreneurs.

During the two days the conference discussed appropriate cultivation practices; availability of raw material, feedbacks and substrates; technology development for production; standardization and specifications; financing and entrepreneurship development; marketing, sales and supply chain management; opportunities for biofuel based projects to avail Clean Development Mechanism benefits; etc.