For the longest time, jatropha has been on the fringes of the national consciousness, promising to take care of the nation’s fuel worries even as copymasters spun epithets like ‘wonder fuel’ and ‘green gold’. Now, with the first big investments firmly in place (see box, Playing the Field), biodiesel is threatening to turn into another sound-and-light show with no action.

The reason: The government has been slow to match the entrepreneurial enthusiasm on the green fuel extracted from jatropha curcus seeds. And with the long-overdue National Biodiesel Policy still to be formulated, there just aren’t enough jatropha seeds available in the country to get the private sector plants up and running.

This has led to a strange situation on the ground. On one hand, entrepreneurs are setting up transesterification plants, which will convert jatropha seeds into oil that can be blended with diesel or used neat to run cars, trains and gensets. But, in the absence of viable jatropha supplies and escalating crude oil prices, most entrepreneurs are now depending on other vegetable oil or waste oil to employ in their plants; some are even willing to import expensive palm oil from Malaysia. The Ministry of Petroleum is currently witness to hectic lobbying to cut down the import tariff for palm oil intended for biodiesel plants.

“We are three years late. By now we should have had full-fledged plantations and jatropha seeds available in the market,’’ says S Shukla, member of the National Biofuel Mission and chairman of the Chhattisgarh Biofuel Development Authority. Barring a few states working on individual initiative, however, there is no concrete national plan despite the grand pronouncements on the wonder fuel.

... contd.