Context

• The government’s bid to raise the level of ethanol blending in petrol to 20 per cent (E20) by 2025, instead of 2030, needs a serious rethink. 

Why does E20 by 2025 need a revisit?

• A recent report released by a private policy analyst rules out the availability of enough raw material to produce the required 13.5 billion liters of ethanol. 
• The 2018 National Policy on Biofuels envisages using agricultural produce, such as sugarcane, rice, and maize, to make alcohol. However,
  • These crops already have committed demand for food, feed, and other purposes. 
  • The scope of expanding the areas under them is limited because of scarcity of both land and water. 
  • While sugarcane and rice are water guzzlers, the output of maize is already insufficient to meet the demands of the poultry and starch sectors. 
• India does not hold much land to grow crops exclusively for biofuel production like other countries like Brazil, the world’s leading sugar and ethanol producer have.
• The productivity of these crops in India is lower than the global averages and their use for food and feed has to be given priority. 
• For a country like India, where malnutrition is rampant, and its ranking on the global hunger index is low, diverting food grains like rice and corn for ethanol production seems inappropriate.
• Most of the existing vehicles are, typically, not made to run on high ethanol-doped fuels because they would require modifications for this purpose. 
• Besides, the level of emission reduction achieved by replacing a small part of petrol with ethanol is found to be too meager and it requires a high cost to be invested.  

Way Forward

• To augment the supply of ethanol for mixing with petrol, producing it by deploying second-generation (2G) technology would be a step in the right direction.
  • 2G technology enables converting farm wastes, including crop residues like stubbles, straws, and stalks, into alcohol. 
• Along with already coming up 2G ethanol plants are in Panipat (Haryana), Bathinda (Punjab), Baragarh (Odisha), and Numaligarh (Assam), setting up more such plants would provide ethanol for petrol-doping and also mitigates the menace of crop residue burning, which adds to air pollution.