Abellon, who won an Ashden Award in 2011, has just commissioned a new solid biofuel manufacturing facility in Vithalapara, Gujarat. Covering  7.5 acres of land, the facility is the largest and first of its kind in Asia. It has the capacity to handle different kinds of biomass, and to process 75,000 tonnes of biomass pellets each year saving up to 100,000 tonnes of CO₂. All agricultural residues will be sourced from farms within a 50km radius.

You can find out more about their work in their case study and film.

Land being acquired to grow biomass fuels could threaten local food crops and puts extra pressure on food security in the developing world – that’s the warning from a new briefing paper put out by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) this month.

European carbon reduction targets will increase demand for biomass fuels. One estimate suggests this will require an additional 90 million tonnes of biomass per year to fuel electricity, heating and cooling. This demand for biomass will quickly outstrip national supply and push companies to look for sources beyond the usual suppliers in places like Russia and North America to the developing world - largely tropical regions where plants grow more quickly. There’s no evidence that shifting biomass fuel production to developing countries will improve local energy access, and there is much concern that it could increase local vulnerability as plantations compete with food crops for the most fertile land in areas where land rights and food security are already an issue.