India has achieved the target of 10% ethanol blending ahead of schedule

What is the News?

At the Save the Soil movement event, the Prime Minister said that the Government of India has achieved the target of 10% ethanol blending in petrol five months ahead of schedule.

What is the Save Soil Movement?

Save Soil Movement is a global movement to increase awareness about deteriorating soil health and to bring about a conscious response to improve it. 

The movement was started by Sadhguru in March 2022, who embarked on a 100-day motorcycle journey passing through 27 countries.

The timeline of India’s Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme

The Government of India promotes the Ethanol Blended Petrol(EBP) Programme with the aim to enhance India’s energy security, reduce import dependency on fuel, save foreign exchange, address environmental issues and give a boost to the domestic agriculture sector.

The ‘National Policy on Biofuels’ notified by the Government in 2018 envisaged an indicative target of 20% ethanol blending in petrol by the year 2030. However, due to various interventions made by the Government since 2014, the target of 20% ethanol blending was advanced from 2030 to 2025-26.

A “Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India 2020-25” was also released by the Prime Minister in 2021. This lays out a detailed pathway for achieving 20% ethanol blending. This roadmap also mentioned an intermediate milestone of 10% blending to be achieved by November 2022.

However, due to the coordinated efforts of the Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) the target of 10% blending under the programme has been achieved five months ahead of schedule.

What are the benefits of achieving this goal?

There are three clear benefits of achieving this goal: 1) It has led to a reduction of 27 lakh tonnes of carbon emission; 2) It has saved foreign exchange worth ₹41,000 crore and 3) Farmers of the country have earned ₹40,600 crore in the last eight years due to increase in ethanol blending.

Source: The post is based on the article “India has achieved the target of 10% ethanol blending ahead of schedule” published in Livemint on 6th June 2022.