Bharat Petroleum is backing a venture expected to produce one million metric tons of biodiesel from jatropha by 2015.

The new venture, Bharat Renewable Energy, will spend $480 million just on growing the jatropha necessary for the project. The company will grow more than a million acres of the crop on what is now wasteland in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A government program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, will fund part of the project. Bharat Petroleum is a state-run refinery.

In an effort to get a head start on the project, Bharat Petroleum has already begun planting jatropha on unused land on the company's properties. These plants will bear fruit that can be harvested in approximately three years. Bharat is also looking for sites in a number of Indian states on which to plant more jatropha.

Bharat Renewable Energy is also backed by Nandan Biomatrix, a jatropha cultivator, and Shpooji Pallonji, a construction firm. The venture was formed this summer with the intention of creating biofuels from a variety of crops, including both jatropha and pongamia pinnata, an Indian birch. Bharat Petroleum is exploring other renewable energy sources as well, including a pilot solar farm in Punjab. Another government-owned refiner, Hindustan Petroleum, is working to develop its own jatropha project. Hindustan plans to plant over 15,000 hectares of jatropha.

The Indian government has mandated a 20 percent blend of biofuel in petroleum by 2017. There is little doubt that Bharat will be able to market its biofuel, assuming that there are minimal issues in growing and processing jatropha.

The mandate requires that biofuels used to meet the new policy cannot come from food crops — an controversial issue dogging biodiesel in other countries. Jatropha actually more than meets the mandate's requirement. Not only is the plant not a food crop, it also can be grown on barren land and therefore does not compete with food crops for arable land. However, there are still issues with domesticating jatropha, and the plant is known for its inconsistent level of production.

Currently, about two-thirds of the world's jatropha is grown in India. Jatropha's yield has been estimated to be 10 times that of corn, but that level of production has yet to be demonstrated on a commercial scale. While jatropha has incredible support as a biofuel, it still remains to be seen whether companies will be able to capitalize on the crop.

Photo by Flickr user Dinesh Valke