Brazil is often cited as a successful example and inspiration for India’s fuel-blended-with-ethanol programme.
In August last year, Union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri said Brazil has been using E27 – i.e. fuel blending with 27% ethanol – for years, and has not reported issues with car engines because of it. Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari also made a case for increasing ethanol levels by pointing to Brazil, which achieved 100% blending years ago.
The topic was thrust into the spotlight as India hit its 20% ethanol blending target – E20 – roughly five years ahead of the government’s original 2030 goal. From April 1 this year, E20 became the default petrol grade at pumps nationwide.
The rollout has also become the subject of a running consumer and political backlash. Motorists told HT that their vehicles’ mileage had dropped and engine parts have started corroding since the switch.
Karnataka Congress chief BK Hariprasad and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal separately accused the Centre of forcing an “experiment” on drivers who never asked for one.
Brazil sits at the centre of the government’s rebuttal to these allegations. So, what did the country really do?
Wars and oil crisis
Brazil did not turn to ethanol when it did originally because it wanted a cleaner fuel. It turned to ethanol because the 1973 oil crisis, triggered when Arab oil producers embargoed the US and its allies over the Yom Kippur War, exposed the country’s dependence on imported crude.
Brazil, then and now the world’s largest sugarcane grower, already had the raw material and much of the infrastructure. Sugarcane had been grown there since 1532, and ethanol as fuel was not new either. The country’s first ethanol plant opened in the state of Alagoas in 1927, and by 1929, some 500 cars in the northeast were already running on it, Portugese outlet Aonde Vamos reported.
Also read – No evidence E20 fuel is damaging vehicles: ARAI
A mandatory 5% blend was ordered in 1931, and that figure temporarily rose to 50% as oil supplies were disrupted during World War II, according to a Bloomberg report.
But the commitment to ethanol blending came in 1975, with the National Alcohol Programme, called ‘Pro-Álcool’, which was launched when cheap sugar and idle distillation capacity made it an easy sell.
By 1979, Brazil had put Fiat 147 on the road – the world’s first mass-produced car built to run entirely on pure ethanol. Within six years, nearly 75% of new cars sold could handle ethanol blended fuels, according to Energy Tribune, an online energy news publication that covers oil, gas, electricity, nuclear energy, renewables and energy policy.
It was the fall of oil prices in the early 1990s that prompted Brazil to go back to petrol, with ethanol-powered cars falling to just 10% of new sales by 2003, a AltEnergyMag said.
Over a decade later, Brazil introduced flex-fuel vehicles, which had engines built to run on petrol, pure ethanol, or any blend between the two. These could switch automatically depending on what was in the tank.
FFVs, introduced in 2003, now account for more than 80% of the new sales in Brazil, according to a release from the Centre. Drivers choose between hydrous ethanol and a lower blend largely based on relative prices, a report cited by Science Direct said.
Currently, blends up to E30 are more common in Brazil, though reports say the country is looking to increase the cap.
What other countries do
The US, the world’s largest ethanol producer at roughly half of global supply, has run E10 as its standard blend since 2007.
Federal air-quality rules restrict sales of higher-ethanol E15 during the summer months because higher temperatures increase evaporation, contributing to smog, but governments often issue waivers to allow sales, Bloomberg reported. The US also allows E15, the adoption of which is slowly growing.
Much of Europe sells E5 alongside E10 to accommodate older cars, and the UK, having switched its standard petrol to E10, keeps E5 available as a premium grade.Thailand has E10, E20 and E85. Paraguay mandates E30. Japan has phased in E10. And Canada, Vietnam and Uruguay have stayed at E5.
Some countries have opted for other biofuels. Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, is looking to move to 50% biofuel content in diesel, though environmental and farming land concerns remain. Malaysia, too, plans to double its own palm-based diesel blend to 20%.
In India, the govt’s stand
The Centre has maintained that ethanol blending in India has been carried out gradually, and scientifically, with adequate precedents, though it conceded there may be a slight drop in mileage of vehicles.
The switch, the government said in a statement on July 5, led to savings of ₹1.9 lakh crore in foreign exchange and 310 lakh metric tonnes of substituted crude oil since 2014-15, alongside roughly ₹1.6 lakh crore in additional farmer income.
The Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), affiliated with the Union government, has separately said authorised service centres have not reported any significant increase in E20-linked complaints. Industry leaders, too, have come to the government’s defence.
But, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) warned, the government was pushing for ethanol-blended fuel and infrastructure even as rising adoption of electric vehicles could leave this capacity underutilised. It also flagged that flex-fuel vehicles deliver lower mileage than petrol ones, and ethanol can have some corrosive effect on certain metals.
