The government has resolved to meet the target of 20 percent ethanol blending in petrol by 2025 which has been now preponed by 5 years, says Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the World Environment Day event jointly organized by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through video conference. 

He said that ethanol has become one of the major priorities of 21st century India. He added that the focus on ethanol is having a better impact on the environment as well as on the lives of farmers. 

The Prime Minister also released the "Report of the Expert Committee on Road Map for ethanol blending in India 2020-2025". He also launched the ambitious E-100 pilot project in Pune for the production and distribution of ethanol across the country. The theme for this year’s event is ‘promotion of biofuels for a better environment’. 

He added that till 2014, on an average, only 1.5 percent of ethanol could be blended in India which has now reached about 8.5 percent. In 2013-14, about 38 crore liters of ethanol were purchased in the country which has now grown to more than 320 crore liters. He said that a large part of this eight fold increase in ethanol procurement has benefitted the sugarcane farmers of the country. 

He said today, a lot of emphasis is being laid on building the necessary infrastructure for the production and purchase of ethanol in the country. Most of the ethanol manufacturing units are mostly concentrated in 4-5 states where sugar production is high but now food grain based distilleries are being established to expand this to the whole country. Modern technology based plants are also being set up in the country to make ethanol from agricultural waste. 

The Prime Minister spoke about the hard and soft approaches taken to fight climate change. On the hard approach, he noted that our capacity for renewable energy has increased by more than 250 percent in the last 6-7 years. India is today among the top 5 countries of the world in terms of installed renewable energy capacity. The capacity of solar energy has increased by about 15 times in the last 6 years. 

The Prime Minister spoke about a project which is underway to develop Kevadiya as an electric vehicle city. He said necessary infrastructure is being made available so that only battery based buses, two-wheelers, and four-wheelers will run in Kevadiya in future.

Union Cabinet Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan were also present on the occasion.