Prateek ری ٹویٹ کیا
Whenever the forced e20 mandate is questioned, NiGa's paid PR agency and IT cell bots become Vengaboys and start singing "Brazil".
To all such parrots -
Stop comparing India’s aggressive E20 roll-out to Brazil. It's a completely flawed parallel.
- Brazil started its "Biofuels" program way back in the 1970s. They spent 50+ years slowly building their entire fuel ecosystem, allowing infrastructure and automakers to mature gradually. We are compressing that timeline radically, leaving consumers to deal with sudden transitions.
- In Brazil, consumers get actual choice at the pump. They can select different blends at different, heavily incentivised price points. Crucially, ethanol is priced according to the "70% rule" - at least 30% cheaper than petrol - to offset its lower energy density. In India, consumers lack choice, and the discount on high-ethanol blends (like E85) doesn't yet cover the 20-30% drop in mileage.
- Brazilian roads are dominated by Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) capable of handling E0 to E100, a technology they mastered over two decades ago. India, however, has a massive legacy fleet of over 30 crore older vehicles built for E5/E10, which face serious risks of engine corrosion and exponential mileage drops on high blends.
- Finally, the environmental cost is vastly different. Brazil's sugarcane fields are largely rain-fed, blessed with abundant water. In contrast, India's sugarcane and grain-to-ethanol production draws heavily from highly stressed groundwater reserves, making a blind copy of the Brazilian model an ecological nightmare for our water security.
Forcing mandates without choice, true pricing parity, or technical maturity isn't following the "Brazil model" - it's ignoring it.
@PetroleumMin @HardeepSPuri @nitin_gadkari @PMOIndia
English
