Road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari nudged industry to take up conversion of biomass into biofuel to help India reduce dependence on fossil fuels and become Atmannirbhar in production of green fuel technology.

“Industry must make investments in large scale production of green fuel from biomass,” Gadkari said while addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) Bio Energy Summit 2024 on Monday.

“We have a vision to make India a USD 5 trillion economy but it is difficult unless we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and opt for alternate methods of fuel production which are clean and cost-effective,” Gadkari said.

According to Gadkari, India’s fossil fuel economy stands at INR 22 lakh crore while the bio fuel economy is merely INR 2 lakh crore. “There is a huge scope for expansion and it is a win-win situation for all stakeholders,” he said.

Gadkari is of the view that it is essential to make India atmanirbhar in fuel production in the wake of fluctuating fuel prices and global uncertainty.

“Transition to large scale production of biofuel will increase farmers’ income, help in employment generation and will take up agricultural growth to beyond 20%,” he said.

Reiterating that the transportation of biomass, storage and requisite infrastructure continue to pose a challenge in taking up large-scale production of biofuels, Gadkari said we need a complete solution to make these projects economically viable.

“There is a huge cost of transportation of biomass and setting up fueling stations is expensive. So we need complete solutions ranging from production, transportation and fuelling pumps to ensure these projects are viable to the private sector,” he said.

Gadkari said Indian Oil is in the process of setting up 400 ethanol pumps across India and majority of these are likely to come up in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra as these states have seen high production of ethanol.