Instability in the Middle East has disrupted oil and gas flows to India. However, India’s proposed plan to produce 30% ethanol-blended gasoline and diesel as a response to supply anxiety would be a costly error. To understand the pending disaster, you only need to look to the United States.
Failed American corn-ethanol
For decades, the American government heavily subsidized and mandated corn ethanol in motor fuels. The National Center for Energy Analytics recently published a comprehensive autopsy of this experiment. The findings are devastating.
Washington’s aggressive push for biofuels destroyed millions of acres of pristine land. Farmers, incentivized by the government, plowed under native grasslands, drained wetlands, and converted fallow conservation acreage into intensive cultivation. Land was diverted from feeding people to filling fuel tanks.
Moreover, the supposedly harmful greenhouse gas emissions that ethanol use was to reduce instead are shown to increase when the entire lifecycle of land use and production inputs is taken into account. And the promised energy independence? A mirage. Americans paid for environmental destruction and higher food bills to benefit the pockets of the politically connected, all while exporting their high-quality fuels.
Bigger failure awaits Indian sugarcane ethanol
If the American corn ethanol experiment was a failure, Indian ethanol made from sugarcane will be a catastrophe.
Sugarcane requires lots of water, consuming over a long growing season up to two-thirds of a gallon per plant—more than double amount required to grow the corn that American production uses.
In terms of fuel extraction, the water requirement of ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane is 647 gallons of water for every single gallon of ethanol produced. In the United States, that number climbs to 733 gallons. In India, the demand is even greater—791 gallons.
India already faces a severe water deficiency. When the monsoons fail to produce sufficient seasonal rains for the crucial Indus and Ganges river basins, harvests suffer and cities ration drinking water. Mandated increases of sugarcane production for fuel can only exacerbate water shortages. Switching from sugarcane to rice, corn, or wheat to meet ethanol quotas offers no relief from greater water demands.
The ultimate metric for analyzing any energy source is the comparison of how much energy is produced to the amount of energy required to produce it. Ethanol’s score is abysmal compared to gasoline and diesel, which are distilled from energy-dense crude oil.
Agricultural production is energy intensive, requiring tractors, irrigation pumps, the manufacture of artificial fertilizers, and the distilling of alcohol. By the time ethanol is pumped into a fuel tank, the output of the process may even fall short of the inputs.
“Producing one gallon of ethanol may well take more energy than the end product contains,” according to the Texas Public Policy Institute. “With fertilizer, water, an energy-intense fermentation process, and transportation necessarily by rail or truck instead of existing pipeline, ethanol production utilizes much more energy than crude oil to reach the pump.”
Free India from climate chains
All that extra work to produce ethanol increases the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases that climate alarmists insist are so dangerous, making the charade of this biofuel even more ridiculous.
Besides, we know that there is no impending climate crisis. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy released an analysis of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, confirming that there is no existential threat from the weather.
Far from being a pollutant, CO2 at higher levels in the atmosphere delivers massive benefits to humanity. CO2 is plant food. Satellite data confirm India’s forests are expanding. Its agricultural production is breaking records. The enriched atmosphere allows crops to utilize water better and yield more food.
India cannot afford to play games with the energy needs of 1.4 billion people to climb the economic ladder. If the Middle East can no longer supply India's needs, retreating into the dark ages of burning biomass is not the answer.
Instead of pouring billions into government mandates, India should drastically increase purchases of American natural gas to bypass the geopolitical instability of the Middle East. The U.S. possesses vast reserves of this energy-dense fuel to power industry, make fertilizers that sustain crop yields, and reliably generate electricity.
It is time to abandon the ethanol illusion and secure the energy India needs to thrive.
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Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
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