Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran has said petrol with a lower ethanol blend should be sold again alongside E20. In an opinion article in The Indian Express, written with Akash Poojari, a consultant at the Department of Economic Affairs, Nageswaran said restoring a lower blend such as E10 at fuel stations, while keeping E20 on sale, “would calm most public concern”.
The Centre said last month that there was no proposal to reintroduce lower-ethanol grades such as E0 or E10. E20 was rolled out last year and has been the only petrol grade available at fuel stations across the country since April. The government has said the programme is intended to cut the oil import bill and reduce vehicular emissions.
Engine damage claims
The authors said the complaint circulating online is “loud, but it is also, on the main point, wrong”, while adding that dismissing it outright would be a mistake.
Ethanol carries about two-thirds the energy of petrol, so mileage falls, they wrote. Because ethanol makes up a fifth of the blend, they estimated the energy penalty at 6% to 7%, against the 30% figure being circulated. Carbon monoxide and unburnt hydrocarbon emissions fall with the blend.
On durability, which the authors described as the primary point of contention, they said “the record is reassuring”. They cited a study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States in which 86 vehicles were run for a cumulative distance of nearly 10 million kilometres on blends of up to E20, with no additional wear found even in vehicles not rated for E20. Testing in India by the Automotive Research Association of India, the petroleum institute and Indian Oil reached the same conclusion.
E10 for older vehicles recommended?
“However, one exception is genuine, that is, India has roughly 75 to 80 million older two-wheelers built before BS4 that run on carburettors. A carburettor cannot sense the extra oxygen in the blend and adjust for it, so on E20, the engine draws in too little fuel for the air it draws in and runs hot,” the column stated. “Further, older rubber seals that are not rated for ethanol are a separate problem, as they degrade on contact with the fuel regardless of engine temperature,” it added.
Replacing those seals is inexpensive but is done one vehicle at a time and covering the fleet would take years even if every workshop began now, they noted. The original ethanol roadmap had asked that a lower-blend fuel remain on sale for such vehicles, but “that fuel quietly vanished from the pumps and needs to return”, the authors wrote.
“Restoring a lower blend at the pumps, say, E10, alongside the option to buy E20, would calm most public concern, lower total ethanol use instead of raising it, and protect the existing fleet while the retrofit programme catches up,” they wrote.
Food versus fuel
The authors said the harder question is whether blending should be raised further. Moving to E27 or E30 is “a different decision altogether, because that is where fuel begins to crowd out food”, they wrote.
India’s crude oil import bill is about Rs 11-12 lakh crore a year and blending at E20 reduces it by 3% to 4%. The edible oil import bill is about Rs 1.6 to 1.75 lakh crore. India produces about 40% of its cooking oil and is targeting 72% by 2030-31. A gap that can be closed fully, the authors said, “is worth more than one you can only nibble at forever”.
Maize now accounts for about half of India’s ethanol and grains for nearly 67%. Maize competes with soybean, groundnut and mustard for the same land. Ethanol from maize is procured at a fixed price well above the sugarcane route, keeping the crop attractive regardless of market prices. Distillery residue is sold as animal feed, undercutting soybean meal and pulling down soybean prices. “The oilseed farmer loses twice,” the authors wrote.
On water, they said figures showing thousands of litres consumed per litre of ethanol combine rainfall the crop would have received anyway with water drawn from rivers, canals and groundwater. “It is the blue water that is scarce,” they said, noting that cane cultivation in Maharashtra and Karnataka draws on already-stressed sources.
The climate case for higher blending is also unsettled as additional volumes would come almost entirely from grain and Indian life-cycle studies do not agree on whether grain ethanol is cleaner than the alternatives, they said.
What can be done?
Nageswaran and Poojari said the programme has cleared sugarcane dues, raised rural incomes and built an assured market. Holding at E20 carries costs too, including distillery capacity built for higher blends, loans taken against expected demand and a sugar surplus that ethanol helps absorb.
Policy choices should be judged by whether they can be reversed, they argued. Procurement prices, water rules, the edible oil import duty and the protection fuel can be changed within a season. The blend level cannot, because once land, water, distilleries and cropping patterns are committed to fuel, “pulling back is bound to be slow and painful”.
They recommended restoring a lower blend for older vehicles, correcting the price and water distortions that favour maize, reviewing the import duty on edible oil and holding at E20 until the trade-off has been costed. “The engine row we witnessed was never the real argument,” they wrote. “The real one is about what we choose to grow,” they added.