The poor supply of raw materials and lack of infrastructure to process biofuel in the state has defeated the very purpose of formulating a biofuel policy in Karnataka (2009). In 2016, the Union government considered Karnataka’s policy as a base model to formulate its policy for the country.
However, the neglect by successive state governments and poor allocation of funds for research work, strengthening of procurement chain, and infrastructure to produce the biofuel, have meant that the state is currently not even able to produce 10% of its total capacity.
At present Karnataka has three major private biofuel manufacturing units in Tumakuru, Bengaluru, and Bagalkot. The installed capacity of these units is one lakh litres per day. However, there have hardly been a few days in the last many years where the units have generated more than 15,000 litres of biofuel per day.
