New Delhi, July 14 (IANS). Supporting India’s ethanol-blended E20 petrol programme, Padma Vibhushan awardee veteran scientist Dr Raghunath Anant Mashelkar on Tuesday said ethanol has already proven to be a viable transportation fuel globally and can play an important role in strengthening India’s energy security.
Speaking to IANS, Dr. Mashelkar, former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), citing Brazil’s decades of experience in vehicles running on ethanol, said that this fuel is completely practical.
He said, “Vehicles have been running on ethanol in Brazil for the last 30-40 years. This experience shows that ethanol is a viable fuel.”
Dr. Mashelkar, Fellow of the Royal Society and chemical engineer, said that expanding the use of ethanol and other indigenous fuels will enable India to reduce its dependence on crude oil imports and increase self-reliance in the energy sector.
Referring to recent geopolitical tensions in West Asia, he said disruptions in global energy supply are an indication that India should rapidly adopt domestically produced alternative fuels.
He said, we have to become self-reliant. We should prepare our own fuel. Dependence on imported energy makes any country more vulnerable to conditions such as global conflicts and supply disruptions.
While strongly supporting ethanol, Dr. Mashelkar said that India should simultaneously work on other clean fuel options. These include methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), compressed biogas (CBG) and biomass-based green hydrogen.
“I’m not just talking about ethanol. We have to look at all these alternative fuels,” he said.
He further said that biomass should be made the key feedstock in India’s clean energy transition.
He said, “Biomass is produced only from the energy of the sun. Therefore, biomass should be our main feedstock, from which we can prepare different types of fuels.”
Dr. Mashelkar said barren and semi-barren lands can be used for cultivation of energy crops like Napier grass. This will make it possible to produce CBG and green hydrogen, while having no negative impact on agricultural land used for food production.
–IANS
abs