Emerging Opportunities in Biofuels in India
Just thought I’d put down some thoughts on the diverse and fast growing opportunities in the Indian biofuels sector, as there have been quite a few enquiries regarding this to our consulting division in the past few weeks.
The limelight for biofuels currently is on grain-based and molasses based ethanol, and deservedly so – the country is almost at 10% petrol blending and targetting a 20% blend by 2025.
But for ethanol to scale to greater heights, opportunities could emerge in the form of second (cellulosic, companies such as Praj Industries doing some excellent work in this) and third generation (biomass to liquid, check out LanzaTech) pathways.
There’s a lot more to biofuels than ethanol – in fact, only about 25% of the total transport fuel is petrol, the rest is diesel! Biodiesel, diesel’s bio alternative, while so far facing challenges on the feedstock front, could see significant emerging opportunities as well with second gen biodiesel (HVO and biodiesel from companies such as Neste and non-edible oils) and third gen biodiesel (biomass to liquid, algae based biodiesel) seeing significant R&D and commercialization efforts.
Our specialty focus areas include 
And then there’s bioCNG derived from biogas (also called CBG or compressed biogas in India and RNG or renewable natural gas elsewhere in the world), which could replace fossil-based LPG as well as fossil-based natural gas. This field, as ,some of you might know, is teeming with activity with a significant government push. Some of the startups such as GPS Renewables have started to scale their growth in this sector and that’s a really good thing.
If you thought that was all, hold on: There’s some serious growth expected in bio-based hydrogen (Biezel Green Energy Pvt. Ltd.), aviation biofuels (Velocys), liquid biofuels from municipal solid waste (Enerkem ) and marine biofuels (Vertoro B.V.).
Boy, that’s some diversity in opportunities for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Indian corporates, isn’t it?
For those interested to know more on these and keen on strategizing for these bio-economy opportunities, do send a note to consult@eai.in with your questions or needs so we can have a chat, or you can get to know more about India’s bio-economy business opportunities on how EAI’s CO3 Bio division can help you understand and act on these from here – https://lnkd.in/gQAkxujH
See my LinkedIn post on this topic
