"Moment of celebration and rejoicing": Hardeep Singh Puri on Global Biofuels Alliance

New Delhi [India], September 9 : After Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched the Global Biofuels Alliance in the presence of world leaders, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India Hardeep Singh Puri has said that it is a moment for celebration and rejoicing, adding that India has set a target of achieving 20 percent biofuels blending by 2025.
“I can tell you as someone who has been associated with the ethanol and biofuels story for something like a decade and a half, today is a historic day. A moment for celebration and rejoicing, because the Global Biofuels Alliance, has just been announced by the Prime Minister, who along with other world leaders, including two of the world's major biofuel producers-the United States and Brazil and others who are consuming and producing countries of biofuels. 19 countries in all and 12 international organisations have got together to form the International Biofuels Alliance," he said.
The Global Biofuel Alliance is one of the priorities under India’s G20 Presidency.
Hardeep Singh Puri further elaborated about the targets India had for biofuels and said that upto 2014, we had only 1.5 percent of biofuels blending in our fuels.
“Up to 2014, with all the efforts, we had only 1.5 percent of biofuels blending in our fuels. Today, I can tell you with a great sense of satisfaction and pride that E20 blended fuel is being marketed in over 4000 retail points in India. We had a target of 10 percent of biofuel blending, which we wanted to achieve by November 2022. It’s an open fact that we were able to achieve the target five months before the decided date. We had a target of 20 percent biofuels blending by 2030, thanks to the decisive steps taken by the Modi government, we were able to bring that target date from 2030 to 2025,” Hardeep Singh Puri said.
“I am very happy to inform you that 12 percent blending is already been done and we are already producing 560 crore litres of ethanol which are available for acquisitions, and marketing,” Hardeep Singh Puri added.
Brazil, India, and the United States, as leading biofuel producers and consumers, will work together during the next few months towards the development of a Global Biofuels Alliance along with other interested countries.
This Alliance will be aimed at facilitating cooperation and intensifying the use of sustainable biofuels, including in the transportation sector. It will place emphasis on strengthening markets, facilitating global biofuels trade, developing concrete policy lesson-sharing and providing technical support for national biofuels programs worldwide.
“From now on, there is a lot of work to be done in terms of international cooperation between the consuming countries and the producing ones. As the leaders said, we wanted to triple the amount of biofuels in our fuel mix by 2030. Biofuels have a great contribution to make in the journey to sustainability, on the environment front and in countries like India, on the agricultural front too,” Hardeep Singh Puri added.
GBA will be a competent organisation that will set technical standards for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) business in collaboration with relevant industry bodies.
The alliance will have a three-category membership structure bringing together member countries, partner organisations and industries.
Nineteen countries agreed to stand with India as initiating members of the Global Biofuels Alliance.