Northeast India to produce electricity from bamboo

The power station will be set up in a village at an estimated cost of 28.5 million Rupees (0.62 million U.S. dollars).

"This cost-effective project has been conceived by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, along with the Ankur Scientific Energy Technologies, a private enterprise," said Benjamin L. Tlumtea, project coordinator of the Zoram Energy Development Agency (ZEDA).

Bamboo would be first harvested and then dried before it is processed for feedstock to produce gas, which would finally get converted to electricity.

An estimated 9,000 sq km area is under bamboo cultivation in Mizoram. The area produces annually 3.2 million tonnes of bamboo, which has never been tapped to generate electricity.

India, the world's largest producer of bamboo after China, grows about 80 million tonnes each year, more than half of it in the northeast.