Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Grow
The crazy world of biofuels
Posted on 22 Aug 25
by Mark Hodgson
An article on the BBC website this week intrigued me greatly. Headed “India’s biofuel drive is saving billions but also sparking worries”, it tells a mixed tale in connection with India’s drive to increase the ethanol mix in the petrol used by the vehicles on its roads. The saved billions alluded to in the title are dollars ($15.5 billion to be precise), representing foreign exchange saved since 2014. Presumably this is a calculation based on money saved in buying less oil and/or refined petroleum. The saving in CO2 emissions, which is the justification for the programme of blending 20% ethanol with petrol, known as E20, seems less impressive. The BBC article claims that – again since 2014 – it has resulted in the avoidance of 69.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. This sounds impressive, until one realises that it represents a saving of less than 7 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) tells us that in 2023 alone, India emitted 4,133.55 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a figure that continues to rise year on year. And whilst climate worriers would tells us that every saving, however small, is important, it has to be conceded that this represents an insignificant saving in the scheme of things.
Of course, the Indian government might be justified in going down this route if there was no downside, or if the downsides were modest compared to the gains. But is this the case? Well, the BBC article suggests that so far as Indians are concerned, the downsides are actually pretty substantial.
The first massive problem is that many vehicles in India are not E20-compliant. One might have thought that the Indian government would have taken that into account before pressing ahead with the policy, but apparently not. Critics claim that ethanol is more corrosive and has lower energy density than petrol, resulting in lower mileage and greater wear and tear on vehicle engine parts. The Indian government’s response, in the form of a press release issued earlier this month, reads to an outsider as an extremely arrogant response, reminiscent of Marie-Antoinette and “let them eat cake”:
https://cliscep.com/2025/08/22/mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-grow/
