WRONG WAY TO CLEAN

Context: Shifting to electric vehicles means subsidising the affluent. There are better alternatives.

Subsidies in e-vehicles:

• Hefty subsidies are being offered by the central government and the state governments of Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat.
• Together, these subsidies add up to Rs 5 lakh per car. They are presently time-bound and are being offered only by five states — Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Meghalaya.

Issues with the subsidies on e-vehicles:

• The moral blindness: For only one in 50 of the 2.77 million cars sold in 2020-21 cost more than Rs 10 lakh. 
• A complete shift to EVs will therefore transfer Rs 2,770 crore from taxpayers to affluent fraction every year till the government terminates these incentives.
• Ignoring the alternatives: Such a “start-up” subsidy would have been justified if there had been no alternative to electricity for replacing fossil fuels in the transport sector. 
• But there are alternatives — ethanol and methanol — whose superior quality and greater safety has made them the preferred, often the only permitted, fuels in major motor races since the 1960s.

Way Forward:

• Gasification holds promise: Methanol can be produced from any biomass waste from crop residues to municipal solid waste, both of which are available in abundance.
• The first commercial plant to convert 1,75,000 tons of refuse-derived fuel into 45 million litres of aviation turbine fuel is being commissioned outside Reno, Nevada.
• Gasification holds even greater promise because simple, air-blown gasifiers are already in use in food processing that can convert rice and wheat straw into a lean fuel gas that can generate electricity and provide guaranteed 24-hour power to cold storage in every village.
• A by-product, biochar, is no less valuable because it can replace imported coking coal in blast furnaces or be used as a feedstock for producing transport fuels even more easily than municipal solid waste.