MUMBAI: Union minister of road and transport Nitin Gadkari on Saturday said the government will be announcing a policy which calls for 15 per cent blending of methanol in petrol to make it cheaper and also reduce pollution.“In the upcoming parliament session, I am announcing a policy of blending 15 per cent methanol in petrol,” Gadkari said at an event organised by Moneycontrol and Free Press Journal in Mumbai. He said methanol gets made from coal and costs only `22 per litre as against the prevailing price of about
`80 per litre for petrol and added that China is making the coal byproduct for `17 per litre itself. “The costs will go down, pollution will go down,” the union minister said. He said factories in and around Mumbai, including Deepak Fertilisers and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers, can generate methanol.
Gadkari said Swedish auto major Volvo has got a special engine to the financial capital which runs on methanol and using the locally available methanol, it will be attempting to run 25 buses entirely on the fuel.
The minister said ethanol should also be used more widely and said that he has suggested his cabinet colleague in-charge of the petroleum ministry to look at this rather than building petrol refineries that cost over `70,000 crore. Gadkari said the total investment opportunity on ethanol alone would be `1.5 lakh crore. He said his concerns on the traffic growth because of a 22 per cent rise in car sales annually and expressed a desire to focus less on roads because of this. On the road works, he said the government has reached 28 km per day and plans to accelerate this to 40km soon.
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