Back in 2018, the Union government had first announced an ambitious programme to encourage sugar mills to expand their ethanol production capacities which, along with the differential price regime for procurement by Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), was aimed to usher in a new era of ethanol manufacture in the country.
The aim was to ensure that around 10 per cent of the total petroleum consumed in the country is blended with ethanol by 2022 and thereafter the target could be scaled up to 20 per cent blending by 2030.
The target was ambitious as till then, actual ethanol blending with