Believing that ethanol is a game changer, a group of ministers sat this weekend to deliberate on the production of second generation of ethanol. The meeting was attended by Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Petroleum Minister Piyush Goel, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Rural Development Minister, Environment Minister etc as well as a host of officials.
Since ethanol production involves non-food feedstock, role of farmers assumes importance here as is clear from the tweet of Nitin Gadkari soon after the meeting “this is to empower farmers.” The tweet was later retweeted by Sanjiv Baliyan.
Being economically viable and environment-friendly ethanol has been under the consideration of the govt which is now planning to go for it in a big way. This meeting discussed second generation of ethanol production.
Gadkari earlier said Government will soon come up with a new policy on non-conventional resources as it plans to take up ethanol blending in petrol to 22.5 per cent and in diesel to 15 per cent.
The second generation ethanol involves production from bamboo, rice straw, wheat straw, cotton straw etc to power vehicles. “If we start making ethanol from bamboo in North-East, lakhs will get employment and several industries will come up,” Gadkari felt.
The govt aims to produce 4 ,000 litres of second generation ethanol. It aims to cut down on crude oil imports which cost Rs 7 lakh crore per annum to the exchequer.
“Government is ready to purchase the entire quantity of ethanol produced by the industry. It could think of ways for economically viable production of ethanol,” the minister had recently told ethanol producers.