India gradually moving towards an economy based on Clean Energy: Official

As part of reforms oriented towards providing cleaner auto fuels in the country, government will soon launch a pilot on hydrogen CNG or HCNG soon, a senior government official said on Saturday.

Petroleum secretary Tarun Kapoor said that a pilot project on HCNG is being undertaken in Delhi soon that will improve efficiency and reduce emissions drastically.

Speaking the Inaugural Session of 'Alternative Fuel Technology for Vehicles: A Cure-all for Sustainable Mobility' organised by PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry in association with CSIDC, Government of Chhattisgarh, Kapoor said.

India is becoming a leader in CNG, there has been a significant transition with the need to move towards cleaner fuels like CNG, ethanol, biodiesel, and electric vehicles.

He said that we need to ensure that CNG is available and affordable ensuring that vehicles are modelled to incorporate CNG smoothly.

Discussing city gas distribution, he shared that there is significant work happening especially in the infrastructure so that CNG is seamlessly available. "We will be doing a pilot project in Delhi on HCNG that will improve efficiency and reduce emissions drastically," the secretary said.

Talking about ethanol, he mentioned that by the next year, there would be a jump in the ethanol production and India is planning to introduce E12 and E15 shortly.

Gradually, we will have blended petrol all over the country and moving to a higher percentage. We have to make pure ethanol available that is happening in several countries and, some countries also have multi-fuel vehicles like Brazil. There is a pilot project which will be implemented for pure ethanol that will take place in Pune shortly, he said.

Kapoor deliberated about the need to make biodiesel affordable and freely available. On the sector of compressed biogas, he discussed that it's an area of focus as it's important for the agriculture sector and, there is a huge source available in the country. He also discussed the projects undertaken by the government for setting up biogas plants that will help in producing a large quantity of biogas that will also flow in the city gas distribution network making it available along with CNG.

On Electric Vehicles, the oil marketing companies are available to facilitate and, we are looking forward to better swapping coming to the petrol station, retail outlets, putting up electric charging. We look forward to work closely with the industry so that we can go forward, said Kapoor.

--IANS

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