Ethanol blend deadline advanced to 2025: Modi
NEW DELHI: India will advance by five years to 2025, its deadline for blending 20% ethanol in petrol (E20) , PM Narendra Modi reiterated on Saturday on the occasion of World Environment Day, even as he listed other measures such as the promotion of renewable energy the country has taken to fight the climate crisis. He also launched a pilot project in Pune for the production and distribution of ethanol across India.
The promotion of E20 fuel is part of the country’s plans to cut its oil imports and reduce pollution (emissions). It is also a move that will benefit sugarcane growers. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in January that India would bring the deadline forward to 2025. Modi said India is a strong proponent of climate justice and is moving ahead with efforts such as the founding of the International Solar Alliance for realising the vision of One Sun, One World, One Grid, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure . He added that India has been included in the world’s top 10 countries in the Climate Change Performance Index.
Modi said the country has taken both hard and soft approaches to fighting the climate crisis. On the hard approach, he noted India’s capacity for renewable energy has increased by more than 250% in the last six to seven years. “India is today among the top five countries of the world in terms of installed renewable energy capacity. Especially the capacity of solar energy has increased by about 15 times in the last six years.”
He referred to the soft approach and listed India’s drive to phase out single-use plastics, clean beaches and its Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), which he launched to improve sanitation facilities in 2014.
India plans to get rid of singleuse plastics by 2022. It is estimated to be using about 14 million tonnes of plastic annually.
Modi said until 2014, when he came to power, on average, only 1.5% of ethanol could be blended in India, which has now reached about 8.5%. The government aims to achieve 10% blending by 2022. In 2013-14, about 380 million litres of ethanol were purchased in the country. This has now grown to more than 3.2 billion litres.
Modi said there has been an eightfold increase in ethanol procurement, which has benefitted the country’s sugarcane farmers. He added that most of the ethanol manufacturing units are concentrated in four to five states, where sugarcane cultivation is high but that food grain-based distilleries are now being established to expand the network to the whole country.
The bulk of the additional ethanol production is expected to come from the processing of sugar cane. The switch to E20 fuel requires changes in the engine specifications of vehicles.
The ethanol-blending programme is one of the seven key drivers identified by PM Modi for the country’s energy map -- gasbased economy; cleaner use of fossil fuels; greater reliance on biofuels; achieving renewables’ target of 450 GW by 2030; increasing contribution of electricity to decarbonise mobility; moving into emerging fuels such as hydrogen; and digital innovation across all energy systems.
The drive is also important as India imports more than 80% of crude oil it processes and pays in dollars. India is the third largest oil consumer in the world after the US and China and its crude oil import bill was over $100 billion in 2018-19 and 2019-20.