India is barely familiar with E20 fuel since it was mandated to be used across all petrol pumps in the month of April of this year. In that case, how have we reached at such a level where we can move from E20 fuel, which we just became used to, to E85 that has an even higher proportion of ethanol? The fact is that at certain petrol stations around India, E85 fuel began appearing at the fueling points.
In this case, if all goes according to plan, the move will completely transform the manner in which India powers its automobiles.
On the occasion of World Environment Day 2026, Union Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Hardeep Singh Puri today launched E85 fuel from an Indian Oil retail outlet in New Delhi. Other officials from the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, as well as CMDs of Public Sector OMCs were also present during the event.
E85 fuel is a blend of high amounts of ethanol, including 80%-85% ethanol along with 14%-19% petrol. This kind of fuel is designed specially for use in FFVs. The objective behind this move is to provide the consumers with the opportunity of running their Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) on any blend ranging from E20 to E100.
The project is being started from 48 Public Sector OMC's retail outlets (ROs) and will be expanded to the rest of the country. Under this initiative, 500 ROs will start selling E85 fuel by December 2026 while 5000 ROs will start selling the same by December 2027. Also, this will help India increase its total ethanol blending levels up to almost 26 per cent by 2030-31.
Advantages of E85(According to Hardeep Singh Puri):
- In order to transfer the economic gains from ethanol production to the citizens, E85 will be available at a price nearly ₹20 per litre less than regular petrol.
- Using flex-fuel vehicle on E85 can help reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions by about 61 per cent when compared with regular petrol vehicle.
- With an octane rating of about 108, ethanol helps offer superior anti-knock properties and hence enables higher engine compression and better ignition timings.
- Increased proportion of ethanol leads to improved combustion efficiency and hence minimizes particulate matter emissions to nearly zero levels.
Explaining further, the Minister said that if 50 per cent of the newly bought two-wheelers and four-wheelers are converted into flex-fuel vehicles, the production of ethanol will be over 312 crore litres leading to savings of around ₹12,403 crore in favour of the farmers.
According to him, such a scenario will also help in saving foreign exchange of about ₹15,151 crore annually while reducing CO2 emissions of around 66.4 lakh metric tonnes.
India’s path towards flex-fuel has been based on success in the global arena but customized for Indian aspirations and capabilities. The Minister pointed out that Brazil had achieved success in running its cars on flex-fuel over many years, with more than 80% of its light car fleet running on flex-fuel today.
He added that India had moved from trial experiments to a full-scale national flex-fuel regime with the introduction of flex-fuel compatible two-wheelers and four-wheelers along with E85 fuel. The Minister requested that the States back the shift with appropriate tax policies for E85 fuel and flex-fuel automobiles.
With these words, he concluded his speech, “Every liter of ethanol replaces our dependence on imported fossil fuel. And every drop of E85 brings with it the essence of Atmanirbhar Bharat.”
“हर बूंद में à¤ारत है, हर बूंद में हमारे किसान हैं, हर बूंद में à¤ारत का à¤à¤µिष्य है” !
Well these were some whitewashed facts that were addressed by the honorable minister......
Lets check out the reality, the benefits addressed are definitely true but still the cons of this initiative will shock you.
E85 vs Vehicles
Now you must be wondering that there is absolutely no chance that your car, bike, or scooter can run on this particular fuel type.
Unlike E20, E85 needs a completely different ecosystem in place, both vehicles, infrastructure, and logistics-wise. But most vehicles found running in India today cannot support E85 fuel type.
However, the government is not planning to enforce E85 on every single individual operating a vehicle on their own accord. Rather, emphasis will be on flex-fuel vehicles that are capable of running on different fuel types from E20 up to E100, thus avoiding consumer lock-ins into one type of fuel. Major vehicle manufacturers like Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki have been producing such vehicles, specifically targeting Indian market.
However, before us private consumers start using these products, several concerns need to be settled. Firstly, performance of these cars should be known along with the reliability and maintenance process. Finally, durability under Indian road conditions needs to be taken care of as well. It goes without saying that consumers prefer someone else's experience over theirs when it comes to new things. That is precisely the reason why some of these newer car models, like the Maruti Wagon R Flex Fuel, are currently available to fleets and cab aggregators such as Ola and Uber and not for private sales.
This tactic has been employed before in India. With the costs associated with electric vehicles relatively high, automakers like Tata Motors created demand among fleet owners until the ecosystem was fully developed. The number of kilometers covered by cabs meant the numbers made sense despite the lack of an ecosystem.
The same might be true for E85. In a period of 2-3 years, fleets manage to accumulate miles that would take ten years for a private automobile owner to reach. Once a Wagon R Flex Fuel reaches the end of its lifespan in a fleet, the manufacturer will have accumulated plenty of data related to wear and tear, fuel system performance, and durability.
In addition, it may even boost the demand for ethanol as the miles travelled in fleets translate into greater consumption of fuel. While one cab burns E85 for longer periods of time than private automobiles, the consumption is significantly higher.
E85 vs Crops
- Excessive Depletion of Regional Groundwater Resources Rice (or paddy), being highly water-consuming, would take about 10,000 liters of water per liter produced (in consideration of all the irrigation requirements of the crops). The use of large amounts of rice in biofuels would expedite a depletion of underground sources of water in regions known as primary producers of the grain, thereby transforming the problem of oil imports into the water scarcity crisis in those regions.
- Risking National Food Security and PDS Distribution traditionally, the Food Corporation of India stored rice as reserve stocks in case of inadequate rainfall, to ensure the food security of the country. Using large amounts of this reserve stock for producing fuel would decrease the availability of the cheap quality of broken rice in the Public Distribution System.
- Higher Methane Output Maintaining constant flooding of millions of acres of newly planted or existing rice fields for meeting both food and rising fuel needs increases methane emissions from agriculture.
- Degrading Soil Fertility by Intensive Monoculture due to the profitable procurement prices offered by the marketing agencies of oil firms for sugar biofuels, the farmers feel compelled to cultivate sugarcane continuously. This method of intensive cultivation leads to rapid exhaustion of soil nutrients, weakening of soil structure and leaving sugarcane plants highly susceptible to large-scale pest attacks
- Extreme Distortion in Supply of Domestic Sugar when the raw sugarcane juice or its syrups, and B-heavy molasses are diverted to distilleries, only a limited quantity is left to go through the process of sugar crystallization. In cases of unseasonable monsoon, such diversions create scarcity of sugar. Consequently, the authorities have no other option but to impose bans abruptly for ensuring availability of sugar to domestic consumers.
- Water maldistribution like rice cultivation, intensive production of sugarcane also entails heavy consumption of water resources. In Maharashtra, for instance, while only less than 4% of land area is utilized for sugarcane cultivation, nearly 70% of total irrigation water is consumed here. Increasing production of sugarcane for energy purposes causes even more water deprivation among nearby mixed-cropping lands.
E85 vs Water
In order to achieve such high blending rates, distilleries will need an extremely large number of crops, which are among the largest water consumers in the Indian agricultural system. Based on official information released by the Ministry of Food, it is clear how much water is needed to create a single litre of ethanol: Rice about 10,790 liters of water. Since it requires about 2.5 to 3 kg of rice per litre of fuel to be distilled, the total amount of irrigation resources is astronomical. Maize (corn) about 4,670 liters of water. Sugarcane 3,636 liters of water. "Day Zero" groundwater alert the supreme think tank of the Indian government, NITI Aayog, has sounded a grave warning through its Composite Water Management Index concerning the above escalation in ethanol production:
- Intensified aquifer depletion: the large-scale ethanol production capacities are located mostly in the highly stressed states such as Maharashtra, with its 396+ crore litre capacity, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka.
- The deadline of 2030 "zero groundwater" scenario: The distilleries are extracting water from the same aquifers underground that the NITI Aayog has reported to become absolutely dry by 2030 in 21 major Indian cities, including Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai.
- High local inequality: As the farmers of arid regions such as Marathwada and Vidarbha cannot access safe drinking water, huge quantities of water are regularly diverted for sustaining nearby industrial biofuel distilleries around the clock.
E85 vs Hunger Index
E85 flex-fuel was introduced in India, and there is an intersection in the policy discussion concerning India’s energy strategy and its ranking of 102nd on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) where it scores a "serious" level of 25.8. The major point of intersection revolves around "food versus fuel," since increased ethanol production depends extensively on water-intensive and land-intensive food crops. Opponents of such initiatives and environmentalists have highlighted the crucial challenges that link India's strong push towards developing biofuels and their food shortages, namely "The Resource Diversion" Using fertile land to cultivate and grow grains (such as broken rice or maize) for biofuel will reduce food production directly and thus may pose problems for affordable nutrition for some populations.
Need for 2G and 3G Biofuel Production: In order to protect food security, it would be necessary for India to skip food crops altogether and switch to second-generation (2G) and third-generation ethanol produced exclusively from non-food crop waste.
Conclusion
The future use of E85 in India involves a very important contradiction, as on the one hand, it will definitely ensure energy security for the country and protect its economy from sudden and harsh blows to its economic stability from any changes in the international oil prices, but, on the other hand, it will cause a major humanitarian crisis within the country. The good point about this move is that using E85 would bring down many billions of dollars from India's expenditure and also would reduce pollution in Indian cities. Another plus point is the establishment of a very profitable and stable source of income for the country's rural inhabitants. On the contrary, however, the major threat of this measure lies in the fact that it will definitely lead to a transformation of the agricultural sector in India, where millions of tons of primary crops, such as maize and rice, will be channeled to ethanol plants leading to water crisis and major decline hunger index. Also, it may lead to affect the mileage of current vehicles.
