(Tribune)
India will start making ethanol from surplus and degraded food material like rotten potato, rotten wheat, broken rice and other biomass to achieve the milestone of 10 per cent ethanol blending with petrol by 2022. During the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, said Minimum Support Price (MSP) is not the only way to double farmers’ income, and the government believes value addition to their basic income will be an effective step.
Pradhan was responding to a query raised by Kanumuru Raghurama Krishnaraju of YSR Congress, who wondered how the government would keep up with its proposal of 10 per cent blending by 2022, when in 2018 all ethanol imports were banned. “With the growing demand for industrial consumption as well as human consumption and with the reduction in sugarcane-ethanol production in India, how are we going to achieve the target of 10 per cent by 2022? Are there any alternative measures that are there in the thinking process of the Government,” Krishnaraju questioned.
