Ethanol blending to go up to 22.5%, says Nithin Gadkari

He said the government is planning to take the blending limit of ethanol in petrol to 22.5 per cent and diesel to 15 per cent, as also second generation ethanol production from bamboo, rice straw, wheat straw, cotton straw etc to power vehicles.
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“If we start making ethanol from bamboo in North-East, lakhs will get employment and several industries will come up,” he said.

The minister said recently he saw such successful industries in Italy and as per rough estimates 40,000 litres of second generation ethanol could be produced here easily.

He said boost to ethanol production could cut India’s huge crude oil imports bill, which is pegged at Rs 7 lakh crore per annum.

“Government is ready to purchase the entire quantity of ethanol produced by the industry. It could think of ways for economically viable production of ethanol,” the minister had recently told ethanol producers.

Chairing a meeting of Indian Federation of Green Energy earlier, the minister had said ethanol could be a game changer as it is economically viable and environment-friendly.

Citing the example of flex-fuel cars in Brazil, Gadkari said India was also on the way to promote such vehicles as this could minimise pollution.

To augment supplies of ethanol to oil marketing companies (OMCs) under EBP, the policy for procurement of ethanol has been modified to smoothen the entire ethanol supply chain to provide remunerative price of ethanol.

In December 2014, the Cabinet had approved usage of non-food feedstocks besides molasses as source of ethanol to be used for blending in fuel.