Watch | Business Matters: Ethanol blended with petrol | Will India benefit from it?

A video explaining how India will benefit from blending ethanol with petrol.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India has achieved its target of blending 10% sugarcane-extracted ethanol in petrol, ahead of schedule.

Blending ethanol with petrol to burn less fossil fuel while running vehicles is called ethanol blending. Ethanol is an agricultural by-product which is mainly obtained from the processing of sugar from sugarcane, but also from other sources such as rice husk or maize. Currently, 10% of the petrol that powers your vehicle is ethanol.

With an aim to augment ethanol supplies, the government has allowed procurement of ethanol produced from other sources besides molasses (which is 1G), such as rice straw, wheat straw, corn cobs, corn stover, bagasse, bamboo and woody biomass – or 2G.

Can your vehicle take 2G as fuel? What is the impact on the environment? Why is this important for India? We answer this and much more.