MAHATMA EDUCATION SOCIETY’S

PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE

AND SCIENCE, NEW PANVEL
(AUTONOMOUS)
(AFFILIATED TO UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI)

 
A PROJECT ON BIOENERGY, POLLUTION AND ECONOMIC
GROWTH IN INDIA FOR THE SUBJECT ECONOMICS OF        
SEM – III
B.COM (ACCOUNTING & FINANCE)
   
NAME:

S.Y.BAF ‘A’

ROLL NO: 5031

SUBMITTED TO: RINKU SHANTANU MA’AM.

 ACADEMIC YEAR: 2020-21

SIGNATURE OF PROFESSOR:

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

First and foremost, I would thank God for being able to complete this project
with success.

Secondly, I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my project supervisor, Mrs.
Rinku Shantanu Ma’am, for giving me the opportunity to do project and providing invaluable
guidance throughout the project. It was a great privilege and honor to work and study under her
guidance. I am extremely grateful for the guidance she has offered me.

I am extremely grateful to my parents for their love and constant support for
me and preparing me for my future. Also, I express my thanks to my friends and
classmates for their valuable support.

Finally, my thanks go to all the people who have supported me to complete

the project work directly or indirectly.

-Divyanshi Kushwah

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 INDEX
Sr. Particulars Pg.

1. Bio-energy, Pollution and Economic growth in India 4

2. Market Overview 5

3. What are problems faced by India? 6

4. Extra-ordinary role of Sugarcane 7

5. Conclusion 8

6. Bibliography 9

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 BIO-ENERGY, POLLUTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN INDIA

India's energy challenges are multi-pronged. They are manifested through growing demand for
modern energy carriers, a fossil fuel dominated energy system facing a severe resource crunch,
the need for creating access to quality energy for the large section of deprived population,
vulnerable energy security, local and global pollution regimes and the need for sustaining
economic development. Renewable energy is considered as one of the most promising
alternatives. Recognizing this potential, India has been implementing one of the largest
renewable energy programs in the world. Among the renewable energy technologies, bioenergy
has a large diverse portfolio including efficient biomass stoves, biogas, biomass combustion and
gasification and process heat and liquid fuels. India has also formulated and implemented a
number of innovative policies and programs to promote bioenergy technologies. However,
according to some preliminary studies, the success rate is marginal compared to the potential
available. This limited success is a clear indicator of the need for a serious reassessment of the
bioenergy programme. Further, a realization of the need for adopting a sustainable energy path to
address the above challenges will be the guiding force in this reassessment. In this paper an
attempt is made to consider the potential of bioenergy to meet the rural energy needs: (1)
biomass combustion and gasification for electricity; (2) biomethanation for cooking energy (gas)
and electricity; and (3) efficient wood-burning devices for cooking. The paper focuses on
analysing the effectiveness of bioenergy in creating this rural energy access and its sustainability
in the long run through assessing: the demand for bioenergy and potential that could be created;
technologies, status of commercialization and technology transfer and dissemination in India;
economic and environmental performance and impacts; bioenergy policies, regulatory measures
and barrier analysis. The whole assessment aims at presenting bioenergy as an integral part of a
sustainable energy strategy for India. The results show that bioenergy technology (BET)
alternatives compare favorably with the conventional ones. The cost comparisons show that the
unit costs of BET alternatives are in the range of 15–187% of the conventional alternatives. The
climate change benefits in terms of carbon emission reductions are to the tune of 110 T C per
year provided the available potential of BETs are utilized.

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 MARKET OVERVIEW

The Government of India has set an ambitious target of 175 GW renewable power installed
capacity by the end of 2022,  therefore making it one of the most progressive renewable energy
policies in the world. This target aims to install a total of 10 GW worth of Bioenergy capacity.
India’s Bioenergy potential is tremendously high and driven largely by overpopulation and vast
agricultural pastures. Experts estimate peg this at a total of 25 GW. India is one of the biggest
economies with a growing population, big capacities of field and plantation biomass, industrial
biomass, forest biomass, urban waste biomass and aquatic biomass. In addition, the demand for
electricity is growing every year due to economic growth, increasing prosperity and urbanization,
rise in per capita consumption and massive rural electrification infrastructure. Another critical
factor to consider is that India is highly dependent on crude oil imports, with an approximately
82 percent of total crude oil imports used to fulfil the domestic consumption demand, which
makes this susceptible to price shocks due unforeseen escalations in crude oil prices. Therefore it
seems to be only logical to combine the potential in Bioenergy as a cheaper, greener source of
power, with the increasing demand for electricity across the country.

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 WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS FACED BY INDIA?
The Indian Government does realize Bioenergy’s potential as a cheap renewable source of
energy and has initiated a number of programs for the promotion of efficient biomass conversion
technologies. Nevertheless, in the current scenario, bioenergy remains an under-explored and
under-utilized sector.
Generic barriers, mostly institutional, technical and financial manner, made it difficult for India
to develop a Bioenergy footprint. The initial investment required for Bioenergy technology is
high. This along with the fact that Indian Government follows long and complex licensing
requirements and environmental pollution standards, make it in general difficult for new
competitors to enter the market. Additionally, one problem regarding biomass from agriculture is
that it is usually just available for a short period after harvesting. Therefore market mechanisms
have to be developed for procurement and safe storage of biomass in an efficient way, which
ensures a solid supply throughout the year.
 
The Indian Government realizes this and is working on necessary changes to achieve their target.
For this the Indian Government has released, amongst other things, the “National Policy on
Biofuels, 2018”. It anticipates that biofuel may be one of the ways towards independence from
crude oil, its unpredictable price escalations and as a means to tightening automotive vehicle
emission standard to curb air pollution. Adopting biofuels as an alternative source of energy shall
significantly improve farmers’ income, generate employment opportunities, reduce imports etc.
as well as align the country towards a greener energy goal. MNRE has set an indicative target of
20 percent blending of ethanol in petrol and 5% blending of biodiesel in diesel to be achieved by
2030. The focus for development of biofuels in India shall be to utilize waste, degraded forest
and non-forest lands and cultivation of shrubs and trees bearing non-edible oil seeds for
production of bio-diesel. In India, bio-ethanol is mainly produced from molasses, a by-product of
the sugar industry.

6
 THE EXTRA-ORDINARY ROLE OF SUGARCANE

India is one of the biggest producer of sugar in the world. In fact India has approx. 550 sugar
mills all over the country. In total MNRE is expecting about 5,000 MW power which could be
generated through biogases based cogeneration in these sugar mills itself. To realize this, sugar
mills must adopt technically and economically optimum levels of cogeneration meant for
extracting power from the biogases produced by them.
 
The Government of India has introduced, in May 2018, a new scheme to support biomass
cogeneration in sugar mills and other industries in order to boost the biomass energy production
in this particular sector. This is to be achieved via progressive higher steam temperature and
pressure and efficient project configuration in new and existing sugar mills, which will produce
electricity and steam for their own requirements and sell surplus electricity to the grid. At the
same time, the by-product of this sugarcane-crushing process can be used for manufacturing
ethanol, which is used nowadays as environmentally friendly fuel. This Scheme has the
objectives of promoting efficient and economic use of surplus biomass for power generation,
maximizing surplus power generation from sugar mills using improved technologies and
promoting technologies of co-generation for supplementing conventional power.

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 CONCLUSION
As we can see that the government of India is trying to increase the use of bio-energy as fuels to
produce energy. The reason behind it being that energy produced by the bio-fuels is
comparatively cheaper that the energy that is produced from non-renewable resources.

The more we use bio-fuels, the more we walk towards sustainable development. Bio-fuels are
produced out of sugarcane waste after processing sugar, from cow dung, human excreta, etc.

As, we already know that the cost of energy produced out of non-renewable resources is more.
Therefore, if the government invests more in production of bio-fuels and bio-gas treatment
plants, right now, it will be beneficial in the long term.

If more energy is produced from Bio-fuels than the government has to spend lesser amount on
non-renewable resources. As a result, more amount of money will be left with government to
investment in other fields.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 www.slideshare.com
 www.roedl.com
 www.phys.org
 www.researchgate.net