Biodiesel mission set to pull down shutters

Economic Times (India)
4 Aug, 2008, 0439 hrs IST,Sushmi Dey & Rajeev Jayaswal, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: The national mission on biodiesel appears to have been given a quiet burial with a group of ministers (GoM) shelving the programme even before it took off. The decision comes even as countries across the world debate whether diversion of farm land for biofuel led to the rally and shortage in food grains.

Finance minister P Chidambaram had raised the issue of how farm land was being increasingly used to produce biofuel in the developed world leading to a shortfall in grain production.

Biodiesel is a variant of the regular petroleum based diesel where the fuel is doped with a vegetable oil like oil extracted from jathropa.

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