India’s Ethanol Production shift from Sugar to Maize

General Studies Paper -3 

Context: Cereal Grains have overtaken sugarcane as the primary feedstock for the production of ethanol used in blending with petrol.

About

• In the current supply year 2023- 2024, sugar mills and distilleries supplied 401 crore liters of ethanol to oil marketing companies.
• Of that, 211 crore liters or 52.7% was ethanol produced using maize and damaged foodgrains (mainly broken/ old rice not fit for human consumption), while sugarcane-based feedstocks (molasses and whole juice/ syrup) accounted for the remaining 190 crore liters.
• This is the first time that the contribution of grains to India’s ethanol production has surpassed 50%.

What is Ethanol?

• Ethanol is 99.9% pure alcohol that can be blended with petrol.
• Alcohol production involves fermentation of sugar using yeast. In cane juice or molasses, sugar is present in the form of sucrose that is broken down into glucose and fructose.
• Also grains contain starch, a carbohydrate that has to first be extracted and converted into sucrose and simpler sugars, before their further fermentation, distillation and dehydration to ethanol.

Ethanol blending

• The ‘National Policy on Biofuels’ notified by the government in 2018 envisaged an indicative target of 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2030.
• In 2014 only 1.5 per cent ethanol was blended in petrol in India.
• Given the encouraging performance and various interventions made by the government since 2014, the 20% target was advanced to 2025-26.

Why is maize being promoted to produce ethanol ?

• Till 2017-18, ethanol was being produced only from molasses, the dense dark brown liquid byproduct containing sucrose that mills cannot economically recover and crystallize into sugar.
• However Sugarcane is a water-guzzling crop. A NITI Aayog report says that just one liter of ethanol produced from sugarcane consumes at least 2,860 liters of water.
• India will require 1320 million tons of sugarcane, 19 million hectares of additional land and 348 billion cubic meters of extra water to produce enough ethanol to meet the 20% ethanol blending target of 2025.
• Further the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) has restricted the use of rice on concerns over cereal inflation and hence maize has emerged as the top ethanol feedstock.