Why India's policy to produce ethanol-blended petrol is short-sighted

The ambitious policy to promote ethanol-blended petrol is politically popular but will be bad for India's food and water security

India’s ambitious policy to produce ethanol-blended petrol (EBP) is a short-sighted and belated approach to bolster the country’s energy security. Plans to substitute 20 per cent of petrol in vehicles with EBP by 2025 will have an adverse impact in the long term on India’s most critical resource — water.

Ethanol as a fuel made sense in the 2000s when foreign exchange was scarce and oil was the go-to fuel. But in a world sprinting towards electric vehicles (EVs), batteries and hydrogen, ethanol, while politically popular, is less suited for India amid scarce land and water. We may end up compromising