In an earlier article in this column, I pointed out that plants were the solar cells of the natural world. They use sunlight to create carbon-based stores of energy that they store and can continuously release as they grow. When they die, complex planetary forces convert these stores of energy into fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and the like), which we extract from the ground and use to power everything around us. From vehicles to power plants. that keeps our lights on.
These fuel sources take millennia to produce, and, once consumed, are lost forever. They emit greenhouse gases that have heated the planet to the point where the technology that once contributed to the advancement of our civilization has become a potential threat to all of us.
Regular readers of this column will know that I am bullish on electric vehicles (EVs). I have written extensively on the benefits of battery-swapping technologies and the vehicle-to-grid opportunities they present. However, as much as EVs themselves are zero emissions, as long as the batteries they use are charged using electricity from the power grid, their net carbon impact is still high because a significant proportion of our power plants are used for generation of fossil fuels. Uses fuel.
Until we build a completely renewable energy grid, we will have to continue looking for less polluting energy sources. Fuel that can be refilled, which is harvested year after year, rather than mined and consumed once and for all. It is environmentally friendly and emits less carbon into the atmosphere than is consumed in its manufacture.
I had heard about ethanol fuel for some time, but for some reason, assumed it was still an experimental technology. I thought that for this to work, we would need a completely different internal combustion engine – one that had been re-engineered to be able to use ethanol.
It recently dawned on me, to my surprise, that not only was this not true, many countries around the world are adding ethanol to their petrol and using it in cars that are barely off our roads. In 2003, since flex-fuel technology was first deployed in Brazil, car owners had the option of filling their tanks with petrol, a mixture of ethanol and petrol, or with 100% (hydrous) ethanol. Today, 93 percent of vehicles in Brazil are capable of running on ethanol.
Ethanol emits between 44% and 52% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. As a result, even when it is combined with petrol, it significantly reduces the CO2 emissions of the vehicle. In the two decades since the deployment of flex-fuel technology, Brazil’s contribution of CO2 equivalents to the atmosphere has been 1.34 billion tonnes less than it could have been. This is why, despite being one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, So Paulo is one of the least polluted.
Ethanol production in Brazil is highly efficient. Most facilities use residual waste from the process (bagasse) for electricity – enough to run the plant with little extra. In 2020, 5% of the country’s total electricity consumption was met from bagasse-generated bio-electricity.
So why is all this relevant to us in India?
Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane. As a result, it has a much higher energy balance than the corn-based ethanol produced by the US. The fact is that very few other countries can produce sugar ethanol if they wish. One of the specialties of sugarcane is that once it is harvested it has to be converted to ethanol within 24 hours or else it gets spoiled. As a result, all sugar ethanol production plants have to be located in the center of the regions from which they obtain their raw materials. This means that only sugarcane growing countries can produce ethanol from it. The real reason Brazil is one of the world’s leading producers of sugar ethanol is that it is one of the world’s largest producers of sugarcane.
Which brings us to India. Like Brazil, India is a major sugar producer. This year, with production projected to reach 41 million metric tons, we will probably also be the world’s largest. This means that, like Brazil, India is one of the very few countries in the world that can quickly adapt its fuel supply to include ethanol. We only need to adopt production technologies that have been proven in Brazil over the past 50 years and mandate that all internal combustion engine vehicles be redesigned to incorporate flex-fuel technology. If we can implement these changes, we will reduce our CO2 emissions significantly, helping us to make progress towards our CoP-26 commitments without requiring immediate radical changes to our energy infrastructure. Will get
Earlier this month, India’s Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari flagged off the country’s first flex-fuel car, capable of running on petrol, ethanol or any mixture of the two. He said the ethanol blended fuel is likely to be available in select parts of the country by next year, with a nationwide rollout planned in a few years.
To be clear, ethanol is not a complete solution to the world’s climate challenges. However, it is an easy first step towards a more sustainable future—one that will buy us over the next decade or so to reorganize our energy infrastructure in the way that is necessary to effect sustainable change. . in country.
Rahul Mathan is a participant in Trilegal and also a podcast called Ex Machina. His twitter handle @matthan . Is
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