Assessment of Indian bioenergy policy for sustainable environment and its impact for rural India: strategic implementation and challenges

摘要

Indian energy scenario has been suffering from persistent problems of reliable supply of energy and environmental deterioration. Among various available renewable energy sources, India has abundance of bioenergy options that have been used since long time to meet the cooking and heating requirements. Bioenergy economy is totally dependent on market of supply and demands, interdependent to each other. However, traditional bioenergy applications were found as inefficient practice with harmful environment impacts. Modern bioenergy technologies have the potential to bridge the demand and supply gap of the country. Furthermore, they have high energy efficiency with low carbon emissions. Bioenergy technologies such as biogas, biodiesel, bioethanol, and biomass gasification have the potential for cooking, transport, and power generation. Various bioenergy policies and programmes have been introduced to accelerate the bioenergy in India in past years. However, the country is unable to use adequate available potential of bioenergy options due to policy gaps. Implementation of bioenergy policy is associated with various challenges such as technical, institutional, financial, environmental, and social aspects. Indian government introduces the new bioenergy policy to accelerate the bioenergy-based generation in India. This article attempts to explore and critically analyse the present bioenergy policies and possible options of India for the successful adoption of bioenergy. A survey-based finding is also analysed through logistic regression and linear regression to explain the pattern of awareness and willingness to pay for the bioenergy technology with reference to biogas and improved cookstoves. We found that socioeconomic variables are important parameters for the success of bioenergy policies in rural India.