Dutta, Mridul (2019). Strategic Niche Management in the biomass energy supply chain. Page 1 of 11 Strategic Niche Management in biomass energy supply chain Mridul Dutta School of Management Sciences, Tezpur University Email: mridul@tezu.ernet.in Contact: 9435403380 Abstract To sustain India’s per capita consumption of electricity of 1075 KWh (2015-16), the first constraint for North East India (NEI) is a capacity of 3639.49 MW against the national capacity of 314642.32 MW (2017). NEI has limited options in solar and wind energy, thus the potential of bioenergy needs to be evaluated for decentralized energy utility. The efficiency of the energy supply chain is high on the proximity-to-generation and lower transmission & distribution losses (TDL). These two factors are in favour of decentralized energy utilities in NEI because feedstock for biomass power production is abundant. Biomass and bagasse burning contribution is 1.96% and 0.56% respectively, having the potential to generate about 17,500 MW for India. The proliferation of grid-independent decentralized biogas plants and biomass gasifiers in India were 4669,074 units and 155,495 units respectively as of 2013. Though planned allocation of budget for biomass energy in the 12 th five-year plan was negligible, Ministry of New and Renewal Energy (MNRE) is focusing on streamlining this supply chain with objectives of environmental sustainability, cogenerations and enhancing grid for renewable energy. For NEI, incentives with 1Mw gasification Model Investment Projects is not enough, but strategic niche management (SNM) interventions are required for reorganizing feedstock supply chain, adapting to the availability- based-power tariff, return-to-grid to sell surplus power, and, cogeneration for satellite townships. Instead of empowering a special purpose vehicle for the capital subsidy, public-private and community participation model needs to be exercised. Because there are limited private promoters in North East India, community land rights and customary laws, the community-based participation model will provide tangible benefits through the transfer of benefits of Central Financial Assistance directly to the stakeholders of the project. Keywords: Availability based tariff-unscheduled interchange, Strategic Niche Management; North East India; Community based participation.