The government recently announced an ambitious plan to roll out vehicles running on 20% ethanol blended petrol by 2025, against the current level of blending of 5-6%.
Achieving this target needs a paradigm shift in production and distribution of ethanol, the lessons for which could be taken from Brazil.
Why is Brazil notable in this regard?
Brazil is one country that has successfully integrated biofuels into its fuel economy.
It has efficiently leveraged its traditions and dominance in sugarcane production into a biofuel economy without compromising food security.
Biofuels are also central to Brazil’s low carbon emission strategy.
How did it achieve this?
To mitigate high dependence on oil imports, Brazil turned to its traditional sugarcane to revolutionise its fuel economy.
Brazil aimed for a higher productivity and sugar-ethanol balance.
This led Brazil to revolutionise its biomass production for ethanol and develop a new variety of sugarcane.
This is popularly known as ‘energy cane’, which is low on sucrose but high on biomass.
With productivity up to 350 tonnes of biomass per ha, against 80 tonnes per ha of traditional sugarcane, it offered a perfect balance.
Brazil thus took up ethanol production without compromising sugar production.
This enabled it to gradually augment its production and blend.
With a mandatory blending of 27% ethanol with gasoline, in 2019 alone Brazil saved about 0.5 million barrels per day of gasoline with a savings of $13 billion in imports.
78% of Brazilian automobiles today run on 27% of ethanol blend.
High biomass productivity of energy-cane is the biological factor that contributes to the high positive lifecycle energy balance of ethanol produced from it.
It thus comes with a resultant positive balance of greenhouse gases emission.
The residual cane-waste (Bagasse) also become commercially valuable for power generation and other commercial uses.
So, it has been possible to transform energy-cane production into a multiproduct enterprise in Brazil.
What is the significance?
Energy cane is promising on drier and lower fertility soils, not suitable for conventional cultivation.
Initially, economic, and strategic security reasons drove Brazil’s ethanol production from sugarcane.
But later it was realised that Brazil’s was the most successful renewable energy programme from biomass.
This especially came with the opening of the debate on the planet’s environmental sustainability.
Use of fossil fuels is one of the major sources of Co2 and other GHG emission globally.
Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is designated as an ‘advanced biofuel’ due to its 61% reduction of total life cycle GHG emissions.
How will it help with emission reduction?
Fossil fuels consumed world-over produce an estimated 4.5 billion tonnes of Co2 every year.
But only a fraction of it is replenished to the earth in fossil-carbon cycle.
However, Co2 is a non-toxic gaseous fertiliser.
If its production and consumption can be rebalanced, it can be beneficially used in the carbon cycle to produce non-toxic biofuel.
Plant based biofuel seems to have an edge over all other sources of biofuels.
This is because plants consume Co2 from the atmosphere and give back oxygen to the atmosphere.
Plant based biofuel thus works as a Co2-O2 pump or a Co2 battery in liquid form through carbon fixation.
Specific crops grown in large areas consume Co2 from the atmosphere and the crop can be used to produce low Co2 emitting biofuels.
This is even better than the electric vehicles which do not reduce GHG but only geographically displaces the emission, unless using renewable energy.
Experience from Brazil shows that GHG emission is the lowest from hybrid ethanol.
With this, Brazil has proved that harmonious coexistence between biofuels and traditional fuels is possible to mitigate the factors that harm the environment.
What steps has India taken?
Apart from the environmental issues, India’s import dependence for fuel economy is alarming.
To note, 85% of India’s crude oil requirement is imported.
To address these twin problems, some serious attempts have been made in the last few years to scale up biofuel production and blending.
The National Biofuel Policy, 2018 has brought in certain revolutionary changes in the biofuel production philosophy of the country.
It envisages augmentation of ethanol production through the traditional sugarcane route.
Also, it has allowed production of alcohol from certain other sugary feedstock.
These include sugar beet, sweet sorghum, and starchy feedstock like corn, cassava, damaged food grains, rotten potatoes, etc.
It has also opened the production of second-generation ethanol from cellulosic agri-residues.
E.g. rice and wheat straw, corncobs, cotton stalk, bagasse and municipal solid waste, etc
These are welcome steps, but it may not be enough to achieve the twin objectives.
What more can be done?
Achieving the objectives requires a paradigm shift and mainstreaming biofuel policy and implementation.
It is also time to utilise the experiences from Brazil.
India can thus seriously consider the mass production of high yielding feedstock such as energy cane using modern agri-technologies.
It can, in turn, create a new bioeconomy for the country, while addressing the environmental concerns.
This has the potential to change the overall outlook of sugar-ethanol production in India.
Moreover, high volume of bio-residue, i.e. bagasse, press mud, agri-feedstock produced in this process can supplement the 2G ethanol and Compressed Biogas programmes.
As per certain estimates, energy cane produced in one hectare has a potential to yield about 18,000 litres of ethanol with right mix of 1G and 2G programmes.
Right mix of plant based 1G ethanol and agri-residue based 2G ethanol has the potential to enable the country to achieve the target of 20% ethanol blend in petrol earlier than targeted.
However, any such programme must be independent of traditional fuel price benchmarking and will need a mandatory blending regime to be successful.
