Transport minister Nitin Gadkari says new vehicles should be able to run on ethanol. Here’s why it might be better for India and the planet than waiting for battery-electrics
Some years ago astronomers discovered a cloud of methyl alcohol 300 times longer than the distance between Earth and Sun. A tiny bit of that cloud could fulfil our fuel needs for ages, but methyl alcohol is nasty stuff, responsible for dozens of ‘hooch tragedies’ every year. Its heavier cousin ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, is gentler. It’s the spirit in every drink from beer to whisky. It’s also an excellent fuel that burns cleaner than petrol, diesel and other hydrocarbons. The best part is that you can ‘grow’ ethanol rather than depend on a handful of countries to sell it to you. That’s what Brazil has been doing since the 1970s, so why not India?
This question has popped up regularly since the first oil price shock in 1973. Back then, India didn’t make enough alcohol, but things are different now. It is the world’s fifth largest producer of ethanol. Besides, it’s not a question of high fuel prices alone. Every ounce of coal, gas, petrol or diesel burnt releases carbon that was buried in the earth’s crust aeons ago, worsening global warming. So, transport minister Nitin Gadkari’s recent comments about making ‘flex-fuel’ engines mandatory, and turning India into an ‘ethanol economy’ are timely.
Why not go electric?
Electric vehicles would be ideal, but it could be years before every automobile runs on a battery. Motorsports body F1 estimates only 8% of cars in 2030 will be fully electric. So, internal combustion engines will be around for many more years, and it is important to clean them up as much as possible. That’s why F1 has decided to switch to 100% sustainable fuel made from municipal waste, agricultural waste, etc in 2025. And starting next year, F1 cars will run on E10 – petrol containing 10% ethanol, the same as ordinary road cars.
Advantage alcohol
Burning alcohol inside an engine also produces carbon dioxide, so how is it better than petrol and diesel? For one, it naturally burns cleaner since it contains oxygen and has less carbon. The bigger difference, experts say, is that ethanol is a sustainable fuel. If you make alcohol from sugarcane, the crop uses carbon dioxide from air to grow. In a sense, running cars on alcohol made from plants is like living on your income, while extracting petroleum is like using a credit card – it frees carbon that was trapped long before humans existed.
In the UK, which is increasing the alcohol content in petrol from 5% to 10%, the government estimates its effect will be similar to removing 350,000 cars from the roads. And petrol engines can be made to run on higher percentages of alcohol, all the way up to 100%, which is what they do in Brazil.
The Brazil model
The possibility of using alcohol as a fuel was explored a century ago. When the US imposed prohibition in 1920, analysts jumped at the prospect of converting the glut of molasses and alcohol into fuel. Under the headline ‘Molasses Newest Substitute Fuel,’ the Arizona Republican newspaper of April 25, 1920 says: “There is no doubt that alcohol for motor fuel purposes looms more important and more promising than ever.”
But alcohol first became the main motor fuel of a country only in the 1980s when Brazil turned to it, to shield itself from another oil shock. By the mid-1980s, almost 90% of Brazilian cars could run on a petrol-alcohol mix. With technological improvements, more than 80% of Brazil’s vehicles today can switch between petrol or 100% alcohol, or any ratio in between. Even ‘normal’ petrol in Brazil contains 22% ethanol, as against 8.5% in India. A car’s engine control system takes about two seconds to analyse what’s in its tank, and maps combustion accordingly. That’s the ‘flex-fuel’ capability Gadkari wants in new Indian automobiles.
What about food prices?
Critics say the use of biofuels, including ethanol, is unethical as it pushes up food prices. If farmers start growing sugarcane instead of wheat because the ethanol industry pays them more, that would be a fair concern. In the US, for example, 40% of the maize crop is used for making ethanol. In France, it is made from sugar beet and grains, and demand for E85 (85% ethanol) fuel is growing as petrol prices rise.
But recent technological advancements have made it possible to convert many types of waste into ethanol. Prince Charles, for example, runs his 51-year-old Aston Martin on E85 made from “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process”.
Wood, straw and grain stalks are much more abundant raw materials, and new technologies are making ‘cellulosic’ ethanol from them viable. Brazil is again taking the lead in such 2G (second generation) ethanol based on inedible waste. One of its producers is setting up a 2G plant with 82 million litres annual capacity. Similar factories could end north India’s yearly stubble burning problem.