Not 100% ethanol, blended fuel makes more sense

Pre-pandemic we were consuming roughly 5 million barrels a day of oil. It is going to go up to 9 million barrels if we want to become a $10-trillion economy, says energy expert Narendra Taneja.

Use of 100% ethanol as fuel has been mulled for a very long time. How long would it go in cutting down our crude import bill because there is also the fact that not too many automobiles are compatible with ethanol as opposed to regular petrol or diesel or fuel?

It is a very good idea as part of the efforts to reduce dependence on oil imports but would it make a very significant difference? The answer is no because we are a great producer of ethanol but at the same time if we start consuming ethanol for everything, we will end up becoming import dependent for ethanol also. We are already importing quite a bit.