India's ethanol production capacity may increase to over 375-400 crore litres: ISMA

01 Jul 2020 Evaluate

With improved production of sugarcane, the Indian Sugar Mills Association of India (ISMA) has said that India's ethanol production capacity may increase to over 375-400 crore litres. The production capacity of ethanol in the country will be more than double of 710 crore litres contracted by the manufacuturers/sugar mills with oil marketing companies (OMCs) for ethanol blending programme (EBP) in the ongoing season 2019-20 (Dec-Nov).

However, the Government of India is targeting an ethanol production and supply target of 300-350 crore litres in 2020-21, and achieve 7.5-8 per cent ethanol blend levels with petrol. As laid down in the National Biofuels Policy, 2018, the government intends to achieve ethanol with petrol blend levels of 10 per cent by 2022 and 20 per cent by 2030, and therefore, efforts are being made to achieve the targets.

Against this, 92.5 crore litres of ethanol have already been supplied to the OMCs between December 1 2019 and June 22, 2020, achieving an average all-India blending of 5.09 per cent with petrol. The blending levels achieved in some states like UP, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Karnataka is much higher at 8.5 per cent to 9.8 per cent with petrol.

B-heavy molasses and sugarcane juice have been diverted away from sugar, to manufacture and supply 58 crore litres of ethanol to OMCs from in the current ESY up to June 20. As per the contracts entered into by the sugar mills across the country, another 23 crore litres of ethanol will be manufactured from B-molasses and cane juice for supply in the balance period up to November 30, 2020. ISMA said this use of B-molasses and cane juice in production of ethanol, and not for sugar production, will result in a diversion of sugar of around 8 lakh tonnes.

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