ETHANOL
- ENVIRONMENT
News: Country’s agro-waste to be converted to ethanol, says expert
What's
in the news?
●
India’s biofuel policy and implementation
received a big push after 2014 and the nation has advanced the target for achieving 20 percent ethanol blending from 2030
to 2025.
● Besides, the country’s agro-waste pegged at more than 50 million tons was also set to be harnessed to produce ethanol.
Key
takeaways:
●
India plans to add about 450 new distilleries across the country to produce ethanol from
damaged foodgrains or agro wastes.
●
The national working group on biofuels was
constituted in June 2015 and the new national biofuel policy was announced in
2018.
●
A target was set to meet 20 percent
ethanol blending by 2030 but it has now been advanced to 2025.
●
Between 2004 and 2014 biofuels did not
receive the kind of traction it should have and the blending was pegged at 1.53
percent during 2013-14 while it reached 7.63 percent during 2020-21 and 10
percent blending was achieved during May 2022 against the target of October
2022.
●
Karnataka
has shown the way and 2,200 buses are running with ethanol blended with diesel
and described it is a unique experiment.
●
Besides, the Indian Air Force has tested
sustainable aviation fuel on the entire range of aircraft and said that India
has taken the lead with regard to biofuels.
●
India consumes around 44.4 lakh barrels of
crude oil daily of which 34.4 lakh barrels are imported and the national
biofuel policy 2018 aims at replacing the fossil fuel significantly with
biofuels.
● India was also looking at sustainable aviation fuel besides methanol and hydrogen as future fuels all of which were expected to reduce carbon emission by 45 percent by 2030 and net zero by 2070.
Ethanol
blending:
●
Blending ethanol with petrol to burn less
fossil fuel while running vehicles is called ethanol blending. Ethanol is an agricultural by-product which is mainly
obtained from the processing of sugar from sugarcane, but also from other
sources such as rice husk or maize.
●
Currently, 10% of the petrol that powers
your vehicle is ethanol. Though we have had an E10 or 10% ethanol as policy for
a while, it is only this year that we have achieved that proportion.
●
India’s aim is to increase this ratio to
20% originally by 2030 but in 2021, when NITI Aayog put out the ethanol
roadmap, that deadline was advanced to 2025.
●
The programme is implemented in accordance
with the National Policy on Biofuels.
● It comes under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
Need
of ethanol blending:
●
Ethanol blending will help bring down our share of oil imports
(almost 85%) on which we spend a considerable amount of our precious foreign
exchange.
●
Secondly, more ethanol output would help increase farmer's incomes.
●
India’s net import of petroleum was 185
million tonnes at a cost of $55 billion in 2020-21.
● A successful ethanol blending programme can save the country $4 billion per annum.
What
are first-generation and second-generation ethanol?
First generation ethanol or 1G: First-generation biofuels are food-related sources such as cereals, maize, sugar beet and cane, sugar, corn and rapeseed. They have high-carbon content.
Second-generation ethanol or 2G: Second-generation biofuels are non-food sources produced from residual and waste products, such as rice straw, wheat straw, corn cobs, corn stover, bagasse, bamboo and woody biomass. Large quantities of used frying oil and slaughterhouse waste are also used.
Challenges
ahead:
1.
Optimisation of engines for higher ethanol blends and the
conduct of durability studies on engines and field trials before introducing
E20 compliant vehicles.
2. The water needed to grow crops for ethanol
is another debating point. Sugarcane is the cheapest source of ethanol. On
average, a tonne of sugarcane can produce 100 kg of sugar and 70 litres of
ethanol - meaning, a litre of ethanol from sugar requires 2,860 litres of
water.
3. The Institute for
Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in a report in March talks
about the inefficient land use in ethanol
production. The report’s author Charles Worringham said that we can use
land far more efficiently by generating renewable power for EV batteries. For
example, to match the annual travel distance of EVs recharged from one hectare
generating solar energy, 187 hectares of maize derived ethanol are required,
even when one accounts for the losses from electricity transmission, battery
charging and grid storage.
4. More incentives for the crop cultivation for the extraction of ethanol may lead to diversion of crop cultivation from the food security purposes which may result in food security issues.
Way
forward:
●
Paced transition from E10 to E15 and then
E20 will enhance adoption and rationalisation of engine configuration and
supply chain network which doesn’t affect the food security.