Research

This paper is a background review representing part of the initial phase of the Financing the Urban Transition work program. The review builds on a growing body of research that highlights both the importance of national sustainable infrastructure and the need to develop more effective and efficient financing mechanisms for delivering compact, connected cities that meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. While progress has been made in both these areas over the last five years, there remains a policy gap between the international/national level and the municipal level.

Minister Khurshid addressed a crowd of students, faculty and guests at the Harvard Kennedy School as part of the India & South Asia Program’s international speaker series, co-sponsored by Harvard’s South Asia Initiative. His comments on Tuesday, October 1, 2013, followed a series of meetings at the United Nations in New York.

The purpose of this volume is to present possible scenarios for the biofuels industry. Each chapter describes how the sector could evolve depending on the policy and strategies that individual countries may select. However, the assumption is that individual choices may have global impacts. Each scenario therefore tries to provide insights on the global economic, energetic, environmental and trade repercussions of specific policy developments.

"Chapter III analysed the commercial viability of second generation biofuels. This chapter focuses on related intellectual property rights (IPRs) aspects. Three hypothetical scenarios in the context of the intellectual property protection of second generation biofuels are developed, with each scenario representing a different level of strictness of protection. Therefore, each scenario translates into a different level of potential access to advanced biofuel technologies by developing countries."

This paper addresses two key questions: What is the economic potential of biofuel development in India? And what are the obstacles to this development? It traces the economics at each stage in the production chain – from harvesting to processing to transportation; provides an overview of the industry’s economics and details the requirements at each stage of the value chain for the industry to reach its potential; and shows how the vegetable oil biofuels sector can provide substantial benefits to the rural poor in India while addressing the risks and threats of the biofuel industry development.