To underline the growing confidence in the nascent yet extremely promising renewable gas sector in Punjab, Invest Punjab has signed an MoU (Memorandum Of Understanding) with the Punjab State Office-Renewable Gas Association of India (PSO-RGAI), for the promotion of setting up Biofuel projects and Compressed Biogas plants (Bio-CNG) in Punjab. This could prove as Stubble Burning solution as claimed by the stakeholders.
Renewable Gas Association of India (RGAI) is set up to offer expertise and guidance to society to meet the best solutions for improving and maximising renewable gas production and usage and thus encouraging green and sustainable growth.
RGAI has been set up to promote, educate and facilitate projects and investments for wider use of environmentally sound alternative sources of energy, in order to help preserve and promote the health, quality, and integrity of the natural and human environments and to facilitate government and private sector partnerships.
Subodh Kumar, Former Executive Director – Indian Oil and President – RGAI said, “This will serve as an advocacy voice for the protection, preservation, and promotion of renewable gas to create additional and diverse market demand for renewable gas.” Maninder Singh, General Secretary RGAI said that they will encourage renewable gas produced from all feedstocks, using competing and sustainable technologies for all end-use applications. This will help to scale up the potential primarily due to the abundance of unutilised agriculture feedstock – an estimated 140 million tonnes of agricultural residues are generated annually.
Ashish Kumar, Managing Director of VERBIO India Pvt. Ltd. (setting up India’s largest Bio-Fuel plant in Punjab) and President, said, “PSO-RGAI are completely aligned with the objectives of the national association wherein, the Punjab State Office of RGAI (PSO-RGAI) will advocate and educate for sustainable development, deployment and utilisation of renewable gas and by-products such so that present and future generations will have access to domestic, renewable, clean fuel and energy.”
Sanjeev Nagpal, Senior Industry Expert and Member – PSO-RGAI, introduces another critical dimension to underline the need for renewable gas. “We consider fossil fuels, paddy straw burning, and industrial effluents to be the major causes of air pollution and all of these factors are visible and what we do not see is never considered as pollution. Methane emission is one such pollutant that is released into the environment during the decomposition of biomass. Methane is 27 times more polluting as compared to carbon dioxide. If we tap this methane to replace fossil fuel there will not only be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but it will also benefit the nation. Now it is time to work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change.”
The MoU is intended to create an investment facilitation platform on behalf of the industry stakeholders to promote growth and investments in the Renewable Gas sector by way of providing an interface to the Government (central government, agriculture, and energy state government departments), Academia (agriculture universities), End-use application areas (Automotive fuel, Industrial fuel, Commercial fuel, Farming and Food industries) from Punjab.
As next steps, Invest Punjab and PSO-RGAI will jointly finalise the key stakeholder concerns with regards to sectoral policy, promotional events, and investor facilitation events for the active and result-oriented promotion of the Renewable Gas sector in Punjab.
