Nitish Kumar opens Bihar’s 2nd ethanol unit at Motipur in Muzaffarpur

PATNA: Chief minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday inaugurated Bihar’s second ethanol plant at Motipur in Muzaffarpur district. The plant has the capacity to produce 110 kilolitre of ethanol per day from maize. It has been developed with an expenditure of Rs 152 crore. The plant is expected to provide employment to at least 700 people.
Nitish had inaugurated India’s first ethanol plant at Purnia in May last year. Altogether 17 ethanol-producing units have been approved in Bihar, including one in Purnia with a capacity of 65,000 litre per day.
Speaking at the event at Motipur, Nitish said works are in progress on 15 more ethanol plants at different places in the state, including Bhojpur and Gopalganj.
“We made a policy in 2007 to make ethanol from sugar cane and proposals worth Rs 31,000 crore had come to us, but the then central government did not accept it. The Centre said that it was more essential to process sugar cane to produce sugar, rather than ethanol. We got to know in 2020 that the central government was making a policy on ethanol production. Thus, I met the Prime Minister and briefed him about all the steps taken by us since 2007 for setting up ethanol plants in Bihar,” Nitish said.
Bihar government had launched Ethanol Production Promotion Policy in March 2021, making it the first state in the country to have its own ethanol promotion policy under National Policy of Biofuels, 2018. The state ethanol policy has allowed extraction of ethanol from surplus quantities of maize, which was earlier limited only to sugar cane.
“We have communicated to the Centre that ethanol can be produced utilising sugar cane, maize, and broken rice. We invited proposals for setting up ethanol plants in Bihar and got a whopping 152 proposals. However, the central government approved only 17 such plants. Works are going on at a rapid pace for setting up ethanol plants at 15 more places in the state,” Nitish said.
According to sources, an ethanol plant at Ara with a capacity of 5 lakh litres per day is ready for inauguration. It will be the second largest ethanol plant in Asia. Besides, works are going on for commissioning of two plants each in Gopalganj and Nalanda districts and one plant at Bhagalpur.
Nitish’s plea to Shahnawaz
Nitish Kumar appealed to former state industry minister and BJP national spokesperson Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, who was also present at the dais, to make efforts for getting more ethanol plants sanctioned for Bihar. “If the Centre increases the number of ethanol plants here, we will give its credit to you only,” Nitish said.
Shahnawaz said the Narendra Modi government took the initiative of coming up with the policy for producing biofuels. “The Centre came up with the policy of producing ethanol by processing sugar cane and maize. The quota of Bihar for producing ethanol has also been increased from 18 crore litre per to 36 crore litre per day. Bihar, in fact, has the highest number of ethanol plants in the country,” Shahnawaz said.
Shahnawaz claimed that the Centre recently extended the deadline for commissioning of ethanol plants in the state to September 30 against the earlier deadline of January 15.