Will Government Stop Ethanol Blending Next Year?

The Indian petroleum ministry had been coming under a serious scrutiny for the last few months for mandating the blending of ethanol in petrol. While the Indian authorities have been arguing, that this is a nature friendly system to reduce dependence on petrol imports, the citizens have been worried about reduced mileage and effects on the engines and bike parts.

This matter came to hearing at the Supreme Court and this invited a very interesting reaction from the Indian government, which said ethanol blending is still an experiment.

The government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the country’s 20 per cent ethanol blending programme in petrol is still an ongoing experiment and the impact of the policy would become clearer by next year.

Reacting to the complaints about possible damage to engines and reduced mileage, the Indian Attorney General commented that there is no credible establishment to prove this.

The response from the defendant further read that “The introduction of E20 petrol in India followed extensive testing and validation by automobile manufacturers and industry experts. Since its rollout, there have been no credible reports of engine failures or performance issues directly attributable to ethanol blending.”

But the problem here is it has been with the fact that several vehicles are not fully compliant of E20 petrol processing but the authorities mandated ethanol blend petrol in all stations.

Now that the government has confirmed that the actual results will come out next year, we shall see if this E20 experiment will stop from 2027. This adds to the growing concern about reduced mileage that’s heard everywhere since this blending was introduced in the Indian market.