International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering Volume 3, Special Issue 3: ICERTSD 2013, Feb 2013, pages 521-526 An ISO 9001:2008 certified Int. Journal, ISSN 2250-2459, available online at www.ijetae.com Presented at International Conference on Energy Resources and Technologies for Sustainable Development, 07-09 February 2013, Howrah, India. ICERTSD2013-194 © IJETAE2013 NATIONAL POLICY ON BIOFUEL UNDER THE SCANNER Mahasweta Sengupta 1+ , Arup Poddar 2 1 PhD Student, The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India 2 Associate Professor, The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India + Corresponding author email: mahasweta.sengupta@gmail.com ABSTRACT The National Policy on Biofuels envisaged the biofuels to be the solution for India’s containment of carbon emission control and energy vulnerability. Being derived from renewable biomass sources and less carbon emitting, they were trusted to be environmentally benign and cost effective. This can lead to lesser dependence on fossil fuel, which translates to lesser expenditure on the import of the same. Biofuel is also viewed as a catalyst for rural development and employment. The policy has also strategized and framed the technological, financial and institutional interventions and its implementation mechanism. The goal of the policy was to achieve a biofuel blending of 20% for biodiesel and bio-ethanol by 2017. Another goal of this policy was to ensure the availability of minimum level of biofuels in the market in accordance with the demands. The goals set so far are definitely not unachievable. In India lot of hope is lying with the second and third generation biofuels. But considering the importance of biofuels and the amount of dependability expected on the renewable energy sources, with time based on socio-economic conditions, it is needless to suggest that India needs to fulfill the biofuel targets. Taking into account the current unfulfilled targets and unevenness in the mandate and goals among the state policies in the country and considering the example of the other countries, there is a need for legislation and a strict mandate to be formulated. Keywords: Biofuel, Biodiesel, Bioethanol, Biofuel Policy, Legislation 1. INTRODUCTION The energy sector plays a key role in the economic development of a country; the worldwide increase in the consumption of energy has led to a scarcity of fossil fuels. This has resulted in the need for exploring other alternatives for energy resources commonly known as renewable resources yielding clean energy. Globally, 19% of the total energy sources are renewable and 14% of this is predominantly derived from biomass sources [1]. Though there is a continuous increase in total installed capacity but the gap between supply and demand is continuously increasing. This is expected to increase to approximately 33% by 2035 [2]. At the same time carbon emission due to the excessive use of fossil fuel has also become a great concern due to its effects on climate change. India is the fifth largest primary energy consumer and fourth largest petroleum consumer in the world. India spends over 45% of their export earnings for importing energy [3].So naturally with regards to carbon emission it doesn’t trail the line either. This is the price paid for rapid economic development. In India RES currently contributes 9% of the total power generation of India [4]. RE can influence energy security by mitigating concerns with respect to both availability and distribution of resources, as well as to the variability of energy sources. In India energy contributes more than 25% of total imports [5]. RE can stimulate development, locally economically and socially. In response to the financial and economic crisis many governments have included substantial spending on clean energy technologies in their stimulus packages [6]. RE in poor rural areas without grid access has shown to bring about potential cost savings compared to fossil fuels (such as diesel generators) [7]. India ranked eighth in the world for investments in renewable energy sector. Investment rose 25% to $3.8 billion, dominated by wind power projects ($2.3 billion), followed by $400 million each for solar and biomass power (including waste-to-energy) [8]. It is noteworthy that India with demonstrated high energy requirements from renewable resources, having a set target of 78.7 GW renewable capacity to be added during the period from 2007–2012 and 20 million rural lighting systems by 2022. In analyzing the Indian scenario Shukla et al. (2008) found that the share of RE is higher in cases which included additional sustainability policies (47 versus 34% of primary energy)[9]. Effective policies and major investments in the area would help achieve a high penetration of modern energy [10].