Earlier, the government set a target of 10% mixing ratio of fuel-grade ethanol and gasoline by 2022 and 20% mixing ratio by 2030, but now the government is making plans to achieve the 20% mixing ratio target.
23 November 2020 Current Affairs:
Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme was launched in January, 2003. The programme sought to promote the use of alternative and environment-friendly fuels and to reduce import dependency for energy requirements.
Highlights:
♦ In a normal sugar season, domestic consumption is 260 LMT, while sugar production is approximately 320 LMT.
♦ The remaining 60 LMT of surplus sugar has not yet been sold, reducing the sugar mill’s funds by about 190 billion rupees each year, which affects the sugar mill’s liquidity position and causes farmers’ sugarcane price arrears to accumulate.
♦ In order to deal with the excess inventory of sugar, the government encourages sugar factories to export sugar, and the government has been providing financial assistance.
♦ However, India is a developing country. According to WTO regulations, sugar cannot be exported until 2023 by extending financial assistance for marketing and transportation to 2023.
♦ Therefore, as a long-term solution to deal with surplus sugar to improve the sustainability of the sugar industry and ensure timely payment of sugar cane fees to farmers, the government has been encouraging the conversion of surplus sugar cane and sugar to ethanol for supply to oil. A marketing company that blends with gasoline.
The benefits of transferring excess sugar cane and sugar to OMC for ethanol blending:
♦ Help reduce dependence on crude oil imports.
♦ Help promote ethanol as a native and pollution-free fuel.
♦ Help increase the income of sugarcane growers.
Targets under the programme:
♦ Earlier, the government set a target of 10% mixing ratio of fuel-grade ethanol and gasoline by 2022 and 20% mixing ratio by 2030, but now the government is making plans to achieve the 20% mixing ratio target.
♦ However, since the blending goal cannot be achieved only by converting sugar cane/sugar into ethanol, the government also encourages distillation plants to produce ethanol from other raw materials (such as grains, etc.), which are currently not sufficient for distillation.
♦ Therefore, the government is also working to improve the country's distillation capacity.