India to pitch for international biofuel alliance at G20: Hardeep Puri

New Delhi: India will at the upcoming G20 meeting plans to pitch for a global alliance on biofuels on lines of the highly-successful international solar alliance, Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday.

The International Solar Alliance (ISA) was conceived as a coalition of solar resource-rich countries to address their special energy needs and was launched on November 30, 2015 by India and France to implement the Paris Agreement.

India, the world's third largest oil-consuming and importing nation, is now pushing for greater use of biofuels extracted from sugarcane, cereals and agri waste as a means to cut reliance on crude oil.

"We will utilise our G20 presidency to try and set up an international biofuel alliance like the International Solar Alliance," Puri said KPMG's ENRich 2022 conference here.

India is taking over the presidency of the group of 20 major economies, also called G20, and will host a meeting of the member nations in September next year.

With nations from Brazil to the US producing biofuels, the alliance would look to develop an ecosystem for fuel standards and engines and collaboration on technology for faster adoption.

Puri said India is already using petrol mixed with 10 per cent ethanol extracted from sugarcane and other agri products (90 per cent petrol, 10 per cent ethanol).

"We have brought forward that target for mixing 20 per cent ethanol in petrol to 2024-25 from 2030. And going by the effort on ground, I can say with some degree of certainty that 20 per cent blending can be achieved even before 2024-25," he said.

Several major biofuel producers, including the US, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and China, are part of G20.

India imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and doping ethanol with petrol is aimed at reducing the import dependence. Also, biofuels have lesser emissions and aid in meeting carbon goals.

Puri said India is diversifying its oil import basket, tapping newer supply regions.

From buying oil from 27 nations, the basket has now expanded to 37, he said.

Diversification would help in cutting dependence on any one particular region or country and help mitigate any supply shocks.