Sugar & Bio-Energy – Emerging vistas

Indian Sugar Industry

Sugar industry is an important agro-based industry that impacts the rural livelihood of about 50 million sugarcane farmers and around 5 lakh workers directly employed in sugar mills. Recently, India has emerged as the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar and the world’s 2nd largest exporter, due to the record production of more than 5000 Lakh Metric Tons (LMT) of sugarcane. The Government has encouraged sugar mills to divert sugar to ethanol and also export surplus sugar so that mills may have better financial conditions to continue their operations.
The National Policy on Biofuels 2018, provides an indicative target of 20% ethanol blending under the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme by 2025.