By 2025, the entire nation will have specialised petrol stations selling E20, according to Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who expressed confidence in the quicker rollout of such fuel stations. E20 fuel is a mixture of 20% ethanol and petrol.
Puri, who recently addressed the AGM of the industry lobby IMC Chamber via video message, said the first E20 outlet opened on February 8 of this year, ahead of the intended April launch. As of now, their number has surpassed 600, and they will cover the entire country by 2025, the news agency PTI reported. The minister said that the mix of ethanol in petrol has gone up from 1.53 percent in 2013–14 to over 11.5 percent in March 2023.
During 2021–22, revenues of about Rs. 20,500 crore have been generated by sugar mills/distilleries from the sale of ethanol to OMCs, as India paces to become the third largest ethanol-producing country in the world by 2025–26.
Further, the government informed earlier this month that during the current sugar season 2022–23 (October–September), about 3,353 lakh tonnes of sugarcane worth Rs 1,11,366 crore were purchased by sugar mills, which is the second highest next to the procurement of paddy crops at the Minimum Support Price (MSP). By 2025, it is targeted to divert more than 60 LMT of excess sugar to ethanol.
According to official estimates, the updated Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme, which is also referred to as E20, has the potential to create additional opportunities to generate over 10 billion litres per year of ethanol capacity with the adoption of a wide range of feedstocks.
Its implementation will result in annual savings of over Rs 30,000 crore in foreign exchange. India, which sources over 80 percent of its fuel needs through imports, spends close to US$ 101.4 billion annually on crude oil imports. And every dollar increase in the crude oil price significantly increases the country’s annual import bill to around Rs 10,700 crore.