India\'s energy demand to grow exponentially, says Puri

New Delhi: Union minister of petroleum & natural gas Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday said that India’s energy demand would continue to provide fuel for future economic growth and is bound to grow exponentially in the coming years. The minister further said that the 10 per cent target on bio-fuel blending by November 2022 was attained 5 months in advance, and the 20 per cent its blending target of 2030 has been advanced to 2025.

“At present, the country is the world's third largest consumer of oil, third largest LPG consumer, fourth largest LNG importer, fourth largest refiner, fourth largest automobile market. With the launch of the bio-fuels alliance, the global biofuel market will go up from $ 92 billion at present to $ 200 billion very shortly. However, this is not the end of the story. The 10 per cent ethanol blending has led to considerable savings on the import bill…,” he said, while addressing the gathering at inauguration of 26th Energy Technology Meet here.

Emphasising 3 challenges for the management in the energy sector — availability, affordability and sustainability, he also said, for a start we did not allow our challenge on sustainability to decelerate, in fact we accelerated.  “Also slowly and surely, we are shedding this limit of 20 per cent as this limit was imposed by us on ourselves because the automobile companies told us that up to 20 per cent blending not much change is required in engines. But now we have 20 per cent blended fuel, and the process of setting up of ethanol and biogas plants etc. is underway rigorously,” he said.

On green energy in the auto sector, the minister also said that the automobile manufacturers are also moving forward in terms of technological advancements. “For example, the recently launched green hydrogen bus by India Oil, now we are going into a new technological mindset, we have electric cars and other flex-fuel vehicles. So, India is likely to account for 25 percent of global energy demand growth over the next two decades,” he emphasised.