THE DEBATE around E20 Fuel in India is heating up. While the government has issued repeated clarification to justify its rapid push for ethanol blending, two of its officials presented a counter narrative. V. Anantha Nageswaran, the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) to the Government, and Akash Poojari, a consultant with the Department of Economic Affairs, have issued their own thoughts on the E20 push in a column written for The Indian Express. Both the government officials explained their stance, urging the government to bring back E10 for older vehicles and consider the food-to-fuel cost in its rapid and mandated E20 push.
The Indian Express article comes at a time when automobile owners are demanding that the center should rollback their nationwide mandated E20 fuel push and at least give options for E0 and E10 alternatives for incompatible vehicles. The article written by CEA Nageswaran and Poojari gives an insight into not just the concerns of the consumers but also raises questions on whether India has built an ecosystem to support ethanol blending.
Addressing the viral allegations of E20 damaging engines and other automobile hardware, Nageswaran and Poojari write that these claims are mostly exaggerated but shouldn’t be ignored. The authors give examples of testing done by the United States and claims that similar tests have been run in India as well.
They addressed the concern of less mileage due to Ethanol-blended fuel. The Economic advisors claim that E20 fuel still has two-thirds of the energy of petrol. Countering the viral claims, they write, “E20 will take you less far, but the loss is small and does not signal any malfunction. Ethanol is only a fifth of the blend, so the energy penalty is around 6 to 7 per cent, not the 30 per cent doing the rounds.”
Nageswaran and Poojari also assure the durability of the hardware, which is the main point of contention for automobile consumers. For this, they cited the tests run by the Oakridge National Laboratory in the US, one of the global leaders of ethanol blending. The American Lab found no increased wear in cars when they ran a total of 10 million kilometers on E20 fuel. In this trial, 86 cars were tested that were not rated for E20. Without getting into specifics, the article mentions that India’s own testing by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), the petroleum institute, and Indian Oil “reached the same conclusion.”
However, the government official’s main argument for bringing back E10 is that India still has 75 to 80 million old two-wheelers built before BS4— the fourth stage of national emission standards introduced in 2017. These vehicles mostly run on carburettors that fail to detect the extra oxygen in the blended fuel to adjust for it. This risks the engine drawing too little energy from the fuel in comparison to the air it draws in, making the engine hot. They further note that the old rubber seals in the hardware can degrade on contact with the E20 fuel regardless of the engine temperature.
The one solution offered by the CEA and the Economic Consultant is that the rubber seals be retrofitted with compatible versions, but with the amount of vehicles on road this could take years. According to them, this was originally expected at the time of the ethanol fuel’s rollout and informed to the government as well. Nageswaran writes that the government was advised to keep lower ethanol blends in the market, like E10, as an option for older vehicles until the retrofitting measure takes place. But the current reality stands in direct contrast to that advice.
ne of the main arguments of Nageswaran and Poojari are related to the larger ecosystem’s compatibility with the government’s rapid E20 push and further intentions of increasing to E27 and E30 blends. In the Indian Express article the government officials note that India produces its ethanol from sugarcane, maize, rice, and other grains. If the production of ethanol rapidly grows there will be a need to produce more of these crops, not just for ethanol but also to make enough production to meet food demands. The growing demand will also affect the market cost as new distilleries will emerge as potential buyers.
In their column, the economists focus on the maize crop to describe the knock-on effect rapid ethanol push can have. The market trend is important because the increased value of a crop also determines what the farmers choose to grow and how much land should be allocated for a particular crop. So if the price of the maize crop increases due to ethanol production it will also affect the food demands. As maize is also used to feed poultry animals and other livestock, the increase in crop price will have adverse effects on the larger food economy, as per Nageswaran and Poojari.
If the government’s aggressive push continues, more maize will be used for ethanol and less will be available for feeding livestock. This can be fixed with more production but it may take up the farmland allotted to other crops, which will imbalance the larger production of crops in total.
This imbalance was already seen in the case of sugarcane produce. Earlier in August, Reuters reported that the government is now considering pushing back on using sugarcane for ethanol from the next season. The main reason behind this is to address the increasing sugar prices and focus more on domestic sugar supplies. The report claims around 3 million tonnes of sugar was used for ethanol in the current season, which amounts to around 10% of annual crops. However, Nageswaran and Poojari write that just cutting sugarcane will not resolve the strain that ethanol blending will cause. The ethanol will then have to rely more on alternate crops like maize, starting the domino effect on other food prices, which the authors urge the center to consider.
See Also: Carmakers Privately Flagged E20 Petrol Contamination Concerns Even as They Backed Rollout Publicly
The government, while listing out the benefits of ethanol fuel, points to the amount of crude oil substitution, savings in foreign exchange, reduction in carbon emissions, and increase in farmer incomes. Although these are real benefits of the alternative fuel, Nageswaran and Poojari note that the water required for farming these crops should also be taken into consideration.
This argument holds the most significance for sugarcane, which is a water-intensive crop, but can be extended to other crops as well. The question, as per the authors, is about how much water is being used to grow these crops and where else could it have been used. Their concern is that the aggressive push tells the farmers to prepare land and water according to the market demand, which will make cutting on these demands later difficult. They write, “Once land and water are committed to fuel, and distilleries and cropping patterns are built around it, pulling back can be painful.”
At the same time, Nageswaran and Poojari advise to stay away from the sensational headlines which only focus on thousands of litres of water required to grow these crops. They break down the two water sources as green water and blue water. The former is the rain water that the crops would have received anyways, and the blue water is taken from other resources including rivers, canals, groundwater pumps, and wells. When accounting for the total water required to grow a crop, both green and blue water are taken into account, but for the question of water scarcity only the latter should be considered. The column reads, “It is the blue water that is scarce, and cane in Maharashtra and Karnataka draws heavily on already-stressed sources. So the water rule should target blue-water use, not the frightening total.”
Nageswaran and Poojari’s arguments go beyond only the ones affecting automobile owners. The viewpoints coming directly from two government officials hints that the rapid E20 push is not going as smooth as the government is making out to be. Both Economic advisors show that there is scope of improvement and a lot of points beyond the ethanol production that the government should account for before moving ahead.
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