The Government has taken several initiatives during the last few years for promoting the use of biofuel and the National Policy on Biofuels-2018 notified by the Government in 2018 was one of the important steps in this direction. This policy expanded the scope of raw material for ethanol production by allowing use of Sugarcane Juice, Sugar containing materials like sugar beet, sweet sorghum, starch containing materials like corn, cassava, damaged food grains like wheat, broken rice, rotten potatoes, unfit for human consumption for ethanol production.  The policy also allows the use of surplus food grains for production of ethanol for blending with petrol with the approval of National Biofuel Coordination Committee (NBCC). The NBCC has allowed the use of surplus rice available with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) & maize for production of ethanol.

The feedstock used for production of ethanol is primarily agro based and any increase in the production of ethanol would directly increase the income of the farmers. Further, in order to increase production of ethanol, Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) has notified schemes for extending financial assistance to project proponents for enhancement of their ethanol distillation capacity by setting up of new distilleries/expansion of existing distilleries/installation of Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system and Molecular Sieve Dehydration (MSDH) Column, etc. for which interest subvention @ 6% per annum or 50% of the actual rate of interest charged by lending institutions whichever is lower on the loans  advanced by  Banks/NCDC/IREDA/NBFCs and any other financial institutions. So far a total of Rs. 4687 crore has been earmarked towards payment of interest subvention under these schemes.

This information was given by the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.

 

****

YKB/SK

(Release ID: 1705402) Visitor Counter : 659