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| Bio-fuels is next big investment. You read it here fitst. |
AS South African drivers braces for fuel prices to rise again next month, India restated its aim to grow fuel using sugar, crop husks, wheat and rice.
This news comes amid reports that Saudi Arabia wants to keep oil prices as high as possible in order to finance a series of economic development projects in the kingdom.
“The Saudis need oil at about $80 and they don’t want prices to go below $70. They want to manage the market like this,” a source at OPEC told Reuters on September 5.
With rand still around 15 to the dollar, this means fuel prices can only go up in South Africa. The same applies to India, where the minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, last week repeated his department’s goal to promote ethanol and other alternative fuels to lessen India’s dependency on imported fuel. Speaking at the 58th annual convention of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (Acma), Gadkari said “ethanol is the solution for our fuel problems.”
He added India has a surplus of sugar cane which is bound to increase this year and his department plans to ferment and refine surplus Blackstrap molasses into ethanol instead of refining it into sugar for food use. Gadkari said the petroleum ministry will have a separate and attractive pricing pattern for the ethanol produced in this manner.
Gadkari also mentioned the government plans to produce ethanol directly from sugarcane juice, which will also be priced attractively and will further aid in increasing the production of this alternative fuel.
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| Hemp is the one plant India is not (yet) considering as a source of biomass for ethanol fuels. |
The Minister also talked about the government’s plan to use cotton straw, wheat straw, to rice straw to produce bio-ethanol and other bio-fuel.
Earlier in May, Gadkari suggested that institutions engaged in agricultural research take up topics such as biofuel to reduce dependency on oil imports.
He said India’s petroleum ministry is also looking at the conversion of other biomass, or plant materials into ethanol. “Government has also noticed that there is a surplus of wheat and rice in Punjab and Haryana, so they are weighing the options to change the crop pattern and increase corn (maize) plantation. So, like in the US, India too can thus produce bio-ethanol from corn,” he said.
In the U.S., the Fuel Freedom Foundation said while the number of electrified or full electric vehicles is predicted to rise to over 3 billion by 2050, even the optimistic assumptions show EVs and other alternative vehicles will still make up only half of the total vehicle on the roads.
The other half will be comprised of internal combustion engines that run on fuels like biodiesel.
And that’s a best-case scenario.
