英语论文网

nt to almost 800 million litres, diesel consumption in transport industry has jumped manifold since 2003, and more than 60 % of the diesel is utilized in domestic transport, agriculture and industrial sector (GZT, 2005). The requirement of diesel is expected to hike in the near future due to economic development in India, therefore government is determined to lessen the dependence on the fossil fuels by developing biodiesel and other renewable sources of energy. Table IV shows assessment of future requirements of diesel in the future with different combinations of bio as well as crude diesel.

Table IV: Comparison of Diesel Demand and Biodiesel Production in MT in India (Source: GTZ, 2005)

The target of 20% blending of biofuels to meet the existing requirements and reduce the reliance on the imported petroleum oil by the Planning Commission, India requires more than 13 MT biodiesel to accomplish this plan.

Although ethanol is commercially available in India yet the biodiesel is still unavailable on commercial scale and it is being manufactured in laboratories and pilot scale projects. Extensive plantation of Jatropha is required to meet the set goals till 2012.

2.9 Biofuels and Environment

The ethical issues related to biofuel industry are extensively debated; production of biofuels and their use at commercial level have their negative as well as positive affects on the environment. The issues like conversion efficiency, emission of greenhouse gases and land requirements are of great importance.

2.10 Conversion Efficiency

Conversion efficiency of the biofuels is under a lot of debate, a huge amount of energy and effort is required to grow crops and yield ethanol and biodiesel from them. Hill et al., (2006) investigated the conversion efficiency of these fuels and reported that the input energies include machine and fuel energy, fertilizers, irrigation, harvesting equipment, transportation of the crop to the distilleries, the input required to obtain lands, buildings for installation of distilling plants and fermentation processes.

The investigative studies of Hammerschlag (2006) elaborated the input energy further; he reported that the inputs like fertilizers and insecticides are energy intensive products; fertilizers involve the use of methane gas in their production and are considered energy extensive products. It is claimed that the biofuels are driving farmers to use more and more pesticides and fertilizers to obtain maximum yields; it is causing a negative impact on the environment causing soil and air pollution. Crops being used for the production of biofuels fetch higher prices in the market; therefore the farmers are cultivating more feedstock crops leaving the food crops. There is a visible decrease in the area covered by food crops and area for feed stocks and other biomass providing crops is on the rise.

Research conducted by Klein and LeRoy (2007) has reported soil erosion as an ultimate result of the intensive cropping. Experts have developed life cycle energy balance to estimate the energy efficiency and environmental impacts 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。