Fuel sector in India, Natural Gas‑Based Economy in India
1. Building a Natural Gas‑Based Economy in India
- International Energy Agency (IEA) and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India, today organised a joint webinar on “Building a Natural Gas‑Based Economy in India Amidst a Changing Global Gas Market Landscape”.
- India is all set to emerge as one of the primary drivers of growth in gas demand in Asia, despite the pressing Covid-19 challenges, owing to a combination of Government’s pursuance of consistent policies and initiatives, as well as fast developing pipeline infrastructure.
- The gas based economy, focus is being given to enhancing domestic gas production, expeditious development of gas infrastructure as well as development of Gas market by providing open access to gas infrastructure.
- On creation of free gas market,Government is progressively moving towards a marketing and pricing freedom regime in the country.
- Gas grid is being expanded to new markets in eastern and north-eastern part of the country with Government’s supports of capital grants for Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga (PMUG) and Indradhanush North Eastern Gas Grid projects.
- Coverage of City Gas projects is being expanded to 232 Geographical Areas (GAs) spread over more than 400 districts, with a potential to cover about 53% of the country’s geography and 70% of country’s population.
- The present zonal tariff structure for the gas pipelines results into additive tariffs for usage of multiple pipelines to transport natural gas from the distant gas supply sources.
- It causes wide disparity in pipeline tariffs particularly for the buyers located distant from the gas sources and thus it hinders the development of new gas markets/ demand centres in far flung and remote areas.
- To create a level playing field among gas consumers located in far/remote areas, the existing zonal tariff structure is currently being reviewed to make it rational and competitive.
- The new tariff structure would facilitate in creating a single gas market by attracting investment to complete Gas Grid as well as ensuring equitable access to natural gas across the country.
- Gas based industries would benefit, with new tariff structure which would improve gas affordability across the country.
- Furthermore, simplified tariff structure would also encourage gas industries to utilize the opportunity of procuring their gas requirement through Gas Trade Exchange(s) platform based on market mechanism.
- A level playing field among industries would promote in minimizing their input cost and improve competitiveness in global production chain.
- Apart of industries, new rationalised tariff structure would also give a boost for expeditious development of CGD projects and PNG/CNG services to the citizens.
- India has set a very ambitious target of increasing the share of natural gas from 6 % to 15 % by 2030 in India’s energy mix, and on the road to achieve the target through market reforms, enhancing infrastructure and capacity building.
- India and IEA have been cooperating across a range of areas, including oil security, energy efficiency, statistics and technology since India became Associate Country of IEA in March 2017.
- The collaboration of India and IEA in the natural gas sector are intended to develop relevant knowledge sharing and experiences on a range of issues including natural gas infrastructure, regulation and gas hub development to help facilitate India’s national effortsto increase the share of natural gas in the energy mix and strengthen India’s energy security.
2. Factors and impediments in incorporating biofuels into the fuel sector in India
- Bio-derived fuels are gaining widespread attention among the scientific community across the world.
- The work on biofuels is in response to the global call for reducing carbon emissions associated with the use of fossil fuels. In India too, biofuels have caught the imagination of researchers.
- For instance, researchers of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad have started using computational methods to understand the factors and impediments in incorporating biofuels into the fuel sector in India.
- A unique feature of this work is that the framework considers revenue generation not only as an outcome of sales of the biofuel but also in terms of carbon credits via greenhouse gas emission savings throughout the project lifecycle.
- n India, biofuels generated from non-food sources is the most promising source of carbon-neutral renewable energy.
- These second-generation sources include agricultural waste products such as straw, hay and wood, among others, that do not intrude upon food sources.
- The team has considered multiple technologies available for bioenergy generation across several zones in the country and performed a thorough feasibility study using data of suppliers, transport, storage and production, among others, published by the Indian Government.
- Elaborating on this research, Kapil Gumte, Research Scholar, IIT Hyderabad, said, “We use machine learning techniques to understand the supply chain network. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence in which the computer learns patterns from available data and updates automatically to produce an understanding of the system and predictions for the future.”
- The techno-economic-environmental analysis on country-wide multi-layered supply chain network and the use of machine learning techniques have helped us capture the uncertainty in forecasting demands and other supply chain parameters and their effects on the operational and design decisions in the long run.
