"The (federal) government should now evolve an effective implementation strategy for biomass power cogeneration program for maximum exploitation of biomass resources of the country with an objective to make biomass energy available at an affordable price to the common man," the parliamentary standing committee said in its recommendations.

The Indian parliament set up the committee as a watchdog for the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy. The committee said it was not satisfied with the current slow approach of the department in tapping the huge biomass potential available in the country.

The committee said it felt that renewable energy, including bio-energy, should now be brought into the mainstream to meet and supplement energy demands in urban and rural areas. In its reports, it has come down heavily on the government for what it calls its failure to exploit this source of energy to its fullest.

Four years ago, India had a fixed target of 10 percent of the additional grid interactive power generation capacity coming from renewable sources over the next decade. It has reached only 5.5 percent thus far.

The total estimated biomass power potential in India is above 100,000MW. This includes 16,000 MW grid interactive power from surplus agro residues and wastes from forestry and plantations, and 3,500MW from bagasse co-generation.

Over the past 10 years, 101 biomass power and cogeneration projects aggregating 750MW have been installed in the country; 73 projects generating up to 585MW are in various stages of implementation. This includes 58 bagasse cogeneration projects meant to generate 450MW and 34 under implementation aggregating 312MW.

The Department of Non-Conventional Energy, in its submission before the parliamentary standing committee, admitted its failure to exploit biomass as a source of alternative energy.

"The potential for grid-interactive biomass power generation-based captive plantations on wastelands is only theoretical, as 40 million hectares or so of wastelands can be put to multiple uses, including food, grains, oil seeds production," said P.K. Bhandari, joint secretary to the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy.

Bhandari said if the available wastelands were to be utilized for energy plantation purposes, it would have to be a major inter-ministerial initiative with the participation of several departments. His ministry, he said, could only provide the know-how for the conversion of biomass into energy or electricity.

The ministry also rejected the parliamentary committee's recommendation on bagasse cogeneration, citing the inability of several sugar mills -- particularly in the cooperative sector -- to generate bankable proposals as a reason. It said biomass combustion technologies are already mature, but biomass gasification technologies are still in the development phase.

The National Institute of Renewable Energy in the town of Jalandhar was formed several years ago when the federal government realized the importance of non-conventional energy. It has since been made the focal point of the ministry for matters relating to biomass conversion technologies.

"Anaerobic digestion of animal waste in biogas plants for energy, manure and sanitation has made a significant impact in quality of rural life wherever it has been deployed," said H.N. Chanakya, a fellow of the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, an energy think tank.

Chanakya said the insufficiency of animal dung resources limits the use of this technology to only an eighth of the overall Indian rural population. But the convenience of a biogas plant in rural households, he said, has led to research and development efforts to extend the use of biogas plants to other non-animal dung biomass -- feedstock and rural residues.

Biomass has been a reasonably successful renewable-energy technology developed and widely disseminated in India. Close to 4 million cattle dung biogas plants have been built against a potential of 12 million plants -- thus tapping a third of the potential.

"The results achieved are good when compared to a simpler-to-disseminate energy device like liquefied petroleum gas. Yet the biogas program has not been runaway success as dreamt of earlier; (there are) gaps between expected levels of success and reality," said P. Rajabapaiah, a senior fellow of department of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science.

A numbers of review and research papers and Indian scholars attached to non-conventional energy matter research have pointed out that biomass residues available in India could produce high levels of biogas and possibly solve the dung shortage problem.

"The switching to non-dung biomass feedstock has proven to be far from simple. Most of the early efforts in this area involved powdering biomass feedstock, rendering them into slurries -- in short emulate the cow-dung feedstock in cow-dung-type biogas plant. In reality, such powdered biomass slurries inevitably stratified into a matted floating layer and a mass for biogas generation," said J.M. Madhok, another expert in non-conventional energy.

The only recommendations in the committee's report that the Department of Non-Conventional Energy accepted was the need to focus on policy and the development of a bio-fuel system for stationary, portable and transport applications.