India has decided to achieve the target of 20 per cent ethanol blending with petrol by 2025 with an aim to cut the spending on the oil imports, said Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The government had last year set a target of achieving 10 per cent ethanol-blending with petrol by 2020 and 20 per cent by 2030.
According to the news agency PTI, speaking at the FIPI award function he said, “Only 1 per cent ethanol blending was done in 2014 as against the target of 5 per cent. In the last sugar year, this ratio has reached 8.5 per cent and next year it is 10 per cent.”
When the nation achieves that ratio of blending, India will be second only to Brazil in blending of ethanol in petrol.
The Indian government aims to boost ethanol production, therefore it is taking various steps for the same. To strengthen the financial condition of sugar mills and cut oil imports, the government had asked mills to focus on ethanol production. Earlier, Centre had urged the mills for diversion of excess sugarcane and sugar for the production of Ethanol as a long term solution for addressing the problem of excess sugar stock.
