"A national mission project on development of fuel cells needs to be launched and a sum of Rs 500 crore should be allocated for the programme," Assocham president K P Singh said in a note to the planning commission.Stressing the need for setting up of a task force to develop world class technology, Singh also advocated formulation of an integrated energy policy to move away from oil dependence. He has also mooted creation of a technology mission to make effective utilisation of coal.

"The proposed oil policy should take into consideration the overall resource position. In this context, utilisation of coal reserves is extremely important," he said. "Therefore, a coal bed methane potential of almost 1030 billion cubic metres needs to be exploited," Singh added.

On the issue of natural gas, he said this was fastemerging as an important source of energy. The current shortfall in demand and supply of natural gas is 100 billion cubic metres, Singh said. "Therefore, intensive efforts should be made to step up exploration of natural gas, creation of suitable infrastructure for distribution of gas to other parts of the country and updating of the conceptual national gas grid plan prepared by Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC)," he said.

Ruing the fact that the country's oil sector has been fragmented into different enterprises, making its management and coordination a difficult task, Singh said this had led to delays.