New Delhi, Aug 27 : With the aim to lessen dependence on the massive import of petroleum products The Centre is deciding to introduce flexible engines in India.The Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, announced on Saturday that the nation invests about 15 lakh crore a year to import of petroleum products, indicating that it is necessary to diversify the agriculture industry towards power and energy sectors.
In his address to the felicitation program of National Cogeneration Awards 2022 in Mumbai, Gadkari exhorted the industry of the need to look at alternative energy sources with the aid of new technologies.
“While 65-70 percent of our population relies on agriculture, our growth rate is between 12 and 13 percent only.
Sugarcane and its farmers are the main engines for our sector.The next step should be cogeneration to increase the revenue generated from sugar.
“The industry must reduce sugar production and produce more byproducts, while embracing the concept of futuristic technology and harnessing the power of leadership to transform information into money.This will allow farmers to not only be food producers but also energy producers, too,” Gadkari said.
The minister noted that although our demand was around 280 lakh tonnes of sugar this year, the actual production was greater than 360 lakh tonnes.
“This could be used because of the circumstances in Brazil.
However, we must shift production to ethanol since the requirement for ethanol is very high.The capacity last year was 400 million litres of ethanol.We’ve implemented a variety of initiatives to boost the production of ethanol.It is now the right time for industry leaders to think about how they can increase demand for ethanol with the help of technologies such as power generators powered by bioethanol” Gadkari said.
The minister also informed an industry group that the government had decided to introduce flexible engines in India.
“Bajaj, Hero and TVS are already producing flex engines, and a lot of car makers have also promised to launch their vehicles on the flex engine,” he said.
“Even auto-rickshaws can operated on bioethanol; in the construction equipment industry , too alternative fuels can be utilized.In the same way, Germany has proven technology to run trains on bioethanol,” Gadkari said.
kvm/arm
