Biofuels, Bioenergy & Bioeconomy

Innovations in life sciences, photosynthesis and engineering advances are creating opportunities to resolve the challenges human civilization is facing today and in the foreseeable future. Human population is growing alarmingly and climbing the prosperity ladder, resulting a continued increase in demand for food, clean water, energy, nutrition and health solutions. By 2030, the world needs 30% more water. With urbanisation and industrialisation, there is a loss of forest cover in many countries which adds to the increasing levels of carbon-di-oxide, apart from continued reliance on fossil fuels. Fossil energy consumed today is already very high and rising. Therefore, fulfilling future energy demand with renewable energy will be one of the biggest challenges to combat climate change. Reliance Industries has committed a significant R&D effort to be part of this exciting journey for the renewable bio-energy. The current focus at RIL is in three separate areas of bio-energy: 1) Agriresidue to Kerosene and other higher value products 2) Jatropa to Bio-diesel and 3) Algae to Bio crude and other high value products. To be commercially competitive and make a sustainable business, improvements in many different areas of science and technology are needed. This presentation will cover learnings from our research and challenges to develop competitive technology, and will feature an amalgamation of advances in engineering and synthetic biology.