CII to Host a Webinar on ‘Ethanol Roadmap for 2025’ on Earth Day

CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) will be hosting a webinar on ‘Ethanol roadmap for 2025’ on Friday, 22nd April 2022. The webinar is supported by GPS Renewables. The webinar aims to highlight the market opportunity of 1G Ethanol projects to achieve India’s target of 20% ethanol blending with petrol by 2025.

The webinar will focus on key aspects such as debt financing and feedstock availability challenges, project risks like input, tech and output, technology readiness, and government policies. The webinar will be a confluence of the multitude of stakeholders of the Ethanol industry emphasising the issues faced by projects for them to be debt ready.

In order to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, India has set a target of 20 percent ethanol blending in petrol by 2025. Currently, 10% ethanol derived from sugarcane or surplus food grain is required to be blended with petrol.

As per National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), to meet the 20% objective, India's ethanol production must increase to 10.2 billion litres, with 5.5 billion litres of 1G ethanol produced from sugarcane and 4.7 billion litres produced from grains.

India’s current ethanol production capacity stands at 3 billion litres. Lack of financial stability to invest in biofuel plants and uncertainty over the price of bioethanol in the future are some of the key challenges in meeting the ethanol blending target.

Commenting on the event, Milind Patke, President, Biofuels, GPS Renewables, said, “We are thrilled to partner with CII to identify and address some of the roadblocks in achieving India’s E20 target. Our aim is to bring together key stakeholders in the industry to find solutions for issues hampering ethanol production. Through this tailor-made webinar and more events in the future, we aim to bridge the gap between lenders and project developers, and help speed up the country's ethanol capacity building process.”

Key Speakers

• Sangeet, Chief Director (Sugar), Department of Food and Public Distribution

• Sankar, CGM, SBI

• Sanjay Rudra GM, Bank of Maharashtra

• Sridhar Goud, ED, Supplies Operations and Distribution, HPCL

• Anurag Saraogi, CGM, BPCL – Biofuels

• Saurabh Banerjee, GM, Biofuels, IOCL

• Atul Mulay, President, Biofuels, Praj Industries

• Roshan Lal Tamak, Member, CII and ED & CEO-Sugar Business, DCM Shriram Ltd

• Vijay Nirani, MD, MRN Group

• V.N. Raina, DG, AIDA

• PK Banerjee, ED, SIAM

• Mainak Chakraborty, CEO, GPS Renewables

• Milind Patke, President, Biofuels, GPS Renewables