Biofuels Policy as the Indian Strategy to Achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7: Targets, Progress, and Barriers

The use of 20% blended biofuels to fossil fuels is one of the important targets of the Government of India to address the impacts of Climate Change, energy-related environmental pollution, and illnesses due to air pollution.

The National Policy on Biofuels 2018 (NPB 2018) is in place to boost the emerging production of biofuels and, therefore, respond to different international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement. Hence, this article examined the production of biofuels in India in line with Agenda 2030 to project the share to be taken by biofuels as its contribution to the country’s energy needs.

The results were compromising; it was observed that the data from 2000 up to 2017 were not on the side of realizing the targets of production and consumption of biofuels in India, whereas the data from 2018 up to now showed a hope of achieving 2030 set goal of E20 petrol in 2025-26, and E5 diesel in 2030. It was clear that the production of bioethanol was boosting compared to its sibling biodiesel, and renewable energy will continue to have a hard take a good share in the total annual energy used in India.

It is recommended to share data between different stakeholders to promote more research, as the low performance in achieving the targets was due to poor communication and missing technology, rather than the lack of feedstock or unavailability of production facilities.