Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh, Puri advised sugar industy to diversify the sources for producing ethanol rather than depending on the water-intensive sugarcane crop, reports The Hindu Businessline. Currently, the main source of ethanol production is sugarcane crop.
Out of the total 923 crore litre ethanol capacity as of today, 605 crore litre comes from sugarcane and 318 crore litre comes from other grains. India is the world’s largest producer and second-largest exporter of sugar.
Speaking at an event, Puri said, “I always worry when people ask about sugar. Sugar is very water intensive… So in many ways, if you look at how much ethanol you can produce from sugar, you are actually exporting water…I don’t think that’s effective.”
“You will find that the diversification we have for producing the required quantity for ethanol production to get to 20 per cent, we are diversifying to agricultural waste to rice straw etc, and I think that constitutes the future”, he further added.
