Mumbai: With India being energy deficient, there is a need for the country to diversify agriculture into energy and power sectors, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said on Saturday. "We already have an energy shortage. We are making an expenditure of Rs 15 lakh crore every year for importing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products. So, this is the time we can diversify agriculture towards the energy and power sector," Gadkari said while addressing the felicitation programme of the National Cogeneration Awards 2022 in Mumbai.
He urged the industry to focus on alternative fuels with the help of futuristic technologies. "While 65-70 per cent of our population depends on agriculture, our agricultural growth rate is only 12-13 per cent. And the next move should be cogeneration to increase revenue from sugar. The industry should produce less sugar and more byproducts, embracing the vision for futuristic technologies and using the power of leadership to convert knowledge into wealth. This will enable the farmers to become not only food growers but energy producers as well," he added.
The minister further said that the country's requirement for sugar was 280 lakh tonnes this year, while the production was more than 360 lakh tonnes. "However, we need to divert production towards ethanol as the ethanol requirement is very high. Last year's capacity was 400 crore litres of ethanol and the government has taken a lot of initiatives to increase ethanol production. Now is the time for the industry to plan demand for ethanol, using technologies such as power generators run by bioethanol," he noted.