The Union Ministry of Science and Technology has selected three consortia that will receive a grant of Rs 125 crore from the Centre. The funding will be over five years, under the Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Centre.
The consortia are led in India by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad; and the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology, Ahmedabad. In the US it will be led by National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Florida and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, respectively.
The Indian and US Governments have provided $5 million a year, to the Indian and US institutions. This will be for joint research and development in solar energy, advanced biofuels and building energy efficiency. In addition, US and Indian consortia members have pledged over $75 million in matching funds, to add up to the total of $125 million. The Joint Clean Energy is part of the US-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy announced by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the President, Mr Barack Obama, in November 2011, which aims to accelerate the transition to high performing, low emissions, and energy secure economies.
The CSIR-IICT and University of Florida led consortium will focus on development of sustainable advanced biofuel systems. The total funding for the project is about 28 crores, including 14 crores from India. Similar amount is contributed by US DoE to the University of Florida lead consortium, according to a press release from the IICT here.
According to Dr. Ahmed Kamal, Project Coordinator from IICT the objective is to develop and optimize several crops such as high-yield biomass sorghum, bmr-sorghum, pearl millet, bamboo and switch grass as lignocellulosic biofuel feedstocks, which will be efficiently converted to biofuels besides optimizing our capacity to utilize waste streams in the cellulosic ethanol conversion process.