Regulation will help stabilize prices of raw biomass for co-firing power plants: Centre

The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy, RK Singh has said that with a view to promote and develop sustainable supply chain and at the same time to ensure faster procurement of biomass pellets for co-firing with coal in thermal power plants, the benchmark price for non-torrefied biomass pellets has been issued. The Minister said this as a reply in the Parliament recently.

The fresh notification regulating biomass pellets price for procurement in coal based power plants has been issued by the Ministry of Power (MoP). The two notifications have come on August 23, 2023 and November 8, 2023. The Minister informed the Lok Sabha that the benchmark prices have been fixed as Rs 2.32, Rs 2.27 and Rs 2.24 per 1000 kcal for National Capital Region (NCR), Northern (excluding NCR) Region and Western Region respectively.

RK Singh also said that the new regulatory prices for biomass pellets exclude GST and transportation cost from biomass pellet manufacturing plant site to thermal power plant. This will also have a stability effect on the prices of raw biomass in the market.

Biomass in India

India currently has an estimated annual biomass availability of approximately 750 million metric tons (MMT), with a surplus biomass availability of around 230 MMT per year.

The installed capacity for biomass production in India has experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4 percent, reaching 10 gigawatts (GW) in the fiscal year 2022.

Government push for biomass power, cogeneration scheme and policy measure for biomass utilisation is promoting technologies make the best use of biomass resources available in India. Technological development and advent of foreign green firms is helping shape up biomass industry in the country.