Railways to set up 3 bio-fuel units in State

Karnataka Bio-fuel Task Force Chairman Y G Ramakrishna said on Tuesday that the Indian Railways, being a major consumer of diesel, will be setting up three bio-fuel production units in the State. The first unit will come up at Yelahanka in Bangalore.
He said each unit will have capacity to produce 20,000 litres of bio-fuel per day. It will be a total of 60,000 litres from three units. Recently, a meeting had been arranged between the railway authorities and the entrepreneurs. The latter had a poser; is the railways committed on buying the daily production?

Another meeting will be held shortly, he said.
This apart, Emami, a herbal cosmetics manufacturing company is also keen on opening such a unit - either in the State, or in Tamil Nadu. The initial investment will be Rs 300 crore. The company has leased about one lakh hectares of land in Ethiopia. It intends to produce seeds on those lands to produce 1,000 tonnes of edible oil and 300 tonnes of bio-fuel per day at the unit, Ramakrishna said. He exuded confidence that the task force will convince the company to pick the State for their plan.

A fleet of 2,200 KSRTC buses are being run on diesel mixed with five percent of ethanol. By next year, it is intended to increase the same to 2,500 buses, Ramakrishna asserted.