Even as ethanol blending is gathering steam, the biodiesel blending programme has failed to take off, due to issues like higher raw material prices, marketing and double taxation by state governments.

TIRUNELVELI: Two scientists of Sri Paramakalyani Centre of Excellence in Environmental Sciences (SPKCEES), affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, have extracted fuel from agro-waste.

C. Sathesh Prabu, a post-doctoral researcher of the centre, who is working on advanced research on bio-ethanol production from lignocellulosic agro-waste along with A.G.

IRKED with the draft report of an expert panel recommending the scaling down of the much-vaunted programe to blend ethanol with petrol, the food ministry has gone formally bawling to the Planning Commission.
The ministry has complained that the panel headed by planning commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri has

Ethanol blending with petrol has resumed after more than a year. Last week, sale of blended petrol started in Bangalore, Mathura and parts of Gujarat.

U.S. regulators are likely to approve a higher blend of ethanol in U.S. gasoline shortly, an ethanol producers group and the top U.S.

Gokul Chandrasekar

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu

Sanjay Jog / Mumbai August 31, 2010, 0:20 IST

Demand that the deposit fee sought by OMCs be cut to 1% from 10%.

Ethanol manufacturers in Maharahstra, in a serious bid to supply ethanol for five per cent blending with petrol, have decided to reserve half their alcohol stock exclusively for this.

On 16 August, the government gave the green signal to blend 5 per cent ethanol with petrol, even as it hiked the price of ethanol from Rs 21.50 to Rs 27 per litre. And while the Planning Commission is examining the issue of ethanol blending and pricing in detail before it submits its final report later this year, this interim measure has left all sides dissatisfied.

IT WAS a big win, at least for now, for the powerful Maharashtra sugar lobby when the three ministers from the state on the ethanol GoM clinched the contentious price of Rs 27/litre for ethanol at the CCEA on Monday.

Under intense lobbying from ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh, Murli Deora and Sharad Pawar, the price of ethanol, although only an interim one at present, was pegged at the CCEA at

In spite of the stiff opposition from the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the group of ministers (GoM) on ethanol today maintained status quo on its earlier decision by upholding a price of Rs 27 a litre for a mandatory 5 per cent blending with petrol.

This is against a price of Rs 21.50 per litre which prevailed between 2006 and 2009.