Advertisement
Comments have been invited from stakeholders within a period of 30 days.
”The newly manufactured gasoline vehicles fitted with spark-ignition engine compatible to run on ethanol-gasoline blends of E-12 and E-15 shall be type-approved as per prevailing gasoline emission norms,” the draft notification said.
Recently, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said the government will make a decision over flex-fuel engines as it is considering making these mandatory for the automobile industry.
Related Articles
Advertisement
”I am going to take a decision within 8-10 days and we will make it (flex-fuel engine) mandatory for the automobile industry,” he had further said.
Gadkari had mentioned that automobile makers are producing flex-fuel engines in Brazil, Canada and the US providing an alternative to customers to use 100 per cent petrol or 100 per cent bio-ethanol.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the target date for achieving 20 per cent ethanol-blending with petrol has been advanced by five years to 2025 to cut pollution and reduce import dependence.
The government last year had set a target of reaching 10 per cent ethanol blending in petrol by 2022 and 20 per cent doping by 2030.
Gadkari had said ethanol is a better fuel than petrol, and it is an import substitute, cost-effective, pollution-free and indigenous.
”It (making flex-fuel engines mandatory) is going to boost the Indian economy because we are a corn surplus, we are a sugar surplus, and a wheat surplus country. We don’t have places to stock all these foodgrains,” he had noted.