Luuk van der Wielen and (right) Chris Somerville. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, is set to launch one of the first bio-energy centres in the country.

The P.K. Sinha Centre for Bio-energy will be inaugurated on Tuesday on the institute’s Kharagpur campus in the presence of the Union minister for new and renewable energy, Farooq Abdullah.

“The centre is the result of interaction between IIT Kharagpur and the University of California, Berkley, over two years and will aim to integrate various disciplines to arrive at a holistic approach towards the energy problem,” said Saikat Chakraborty, an assistant professor of the institute.

IIT Kharagpur’s other partner in the project is B-Basic, a consortium of universities, research institutions and companies in the Netherlands.

“The energy problem is a global problem and global co-operation is needed to address it,” said Chris Somerville, the director of Energy Biosciences Institute and a professor of plant and microbial biology at University of California, Berkley. He will attend the inauguration of the centre.

While the US university is looking to replicate its holistic approach to bio-energy at the Kharagpur centre, with focus on environmental and social factors, B-Basic is also interested in the economic impact of the initiative.

“Bio-energy can generate a lot of jobs. We are interested in seeing how it can impact the economy and help in the growth of the country,” said Luuk van der Wielen, the director of B-Basic.

Somerville and van der Wielen are part of the advisory board of the centre, which will focus on research but also offer courses and produce bio-energy.

“We are already doing a lot of work in energy sciences in chemical engineering, bio-technology and agriculture and food engineering departments. We want to offer a platform for collaboration,” added Chakraborty.

The institute also plans to start an energy engineering department next year.