CHENNAI: Chief Minister MK Stalin on Saturday announced the Ethanol Blending Policy (EBP) 2023, aimed at promoting the state as a green economy and investment hub for cost-effective, alternative green fuel.
The policy aims to attract investments worth Rs 5,000 crore in molasses and grain-based ethanol production in the state and achieve self-sufficiency in meeting the estimated ethanol blending requirement of 130 crore litres.
The EBP is in line with the National Policy on Biofuels that targets an indicative 20% blending of ethanol in petrol by 2030 under the Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme. The policy also aims to mitigate climate change risks and reduce air pollution from fossil fuels. Currently, TN has installed a plant capacity of 664 kilo litres per day (KLPD) for producing fuel-grade ethanol under the EBP, with an additional 160 KLPD capacity in the pipeline.
The state government aims to diversify feedstock to encourage low water consumption and versatile crops like maize, sorghum, and tapioca, and to come up with appropriate guidelines to utilise damaged rice for ethanol production. The policy aims to improve farmer income through price realisation and expansion of opportunities due to ethanol blending, revive the sugar industry in Tamil Nadu through improved utilisation of existing mills, and enable capacity creation and diversification of grain-based distilleries.
The policy applies to new grain-based distilleries or expansion of existing grain-based distilleries, new molasses and sugar/sugar syrup-based distilleries or expansion of existing distilleries (whether attached to sugar mills or standalone distilleries), and new dual feed distilleries or expansion of existing dual feed distilleries.
Tamil Nadu has 42 sugar mills with an overall cane-crushing capacity of 1.23 lakh tonnes per day. However, the capacity utilization has remained below 60% over the past few years, with only 80 lakh tonnes crushed from 37 factories in the state during the last two decades.