E20 FUEL

E20 FUEL

Context

- The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has published a draft notification seeking comments from the public for adoption of E20 fuel, i.e, blend of 20% of ethanol with gasoline, as an automotive fuel and for the adoption of mass emission standards for this fuel.

More about E20 Fuel

E20 fuel is a blend of 20% of ethanol with gasoline.
The current permissible level of blending is 10% of ethanol, though India reached only 5.6% of blending in 2019.

Advantages of bioethanol

Less fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions compared to conventional fuels.
High Octane number allowing spark-ignition engines to run more efficiently.
Lower particulate emissions.
Lower benzene and 1-3 butadiene unregulated emissions; benzene levels decrease as the ethanol concentration in gasoline increases.
Less ozone forming potential than gasoline and diesel.
No sulphur content.
Biodegradable.
Less toxic than methanol or biomethanol.
Dedicated and flexible fuelled vehicles with spark- ignition engines fuelled with bioethanol have been shown to have higher energy efficiency than their equivalent gasoline engines.
It will help reduce the oil import bill, thereby saving foreign exchange and boosting energy security.

Initiatives to Promote Biofuels:

- Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme: To extract the fuel from surplus quantities of food grains such as maize, jawar, bajra fruit and vegetable waste.
- Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana, 2019: The objective of the scheme is to create an ecosystem for setting up commercial projects and to boost research and development in the 2G Ethanol sector.
- GOBAR (Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources) DHAN scheme, 2018: It focuses on managing and converting cattle dung and solid waste in farms to useful compost,biogas and bio-CNG, thus keeping villages clean and increasing the income of rural households.
  - It was launched under Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin).
- Repurpose Used Cooking Oil (RUCO): It was launched by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and aims for an ecosystem that will enable the collection and conversion of used cooking oil to biodiesel.

- - The Policy categorises biofuels as “Basic Biofuels” to enable extension of appropriate financial and fiscal incentives under three categories:
    - First Generation (1G) ethanol & biodiesel and “Advanced Biofuels”.
    - Second Generation (2G) ethanol, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to drop-in fuels.
    - Third Generation (3G) biofuels, bio-CNG etc.
  - It expands the scope of raw material for ethanol production by allowing use of sugarcane juice, sugar containing materials like sugar beet, sweet sorghum, starch containing materials like corn, cassava, damaged food grains like wheat, broken rice, rotten potatoes, unfit for human consumption, for ethanol production.

The Policy allows use of surplus food grains for production of ethanol for blending with petrol with the approval of National Biofuel Coordination Committee.

With a thrust on Advanced Biofuels, the Policy indicates a viability gap funding scheme for 2G ethanol Bio refineries of Rs. 5000 crore in 6 years in addition to additional tax incentives, higher purchase price as compared to 1G biofuels.