u/Popping_Bubble

Below is a water consumption math of different sources to produce just 1 litre of ethanol:

Rice: ~10,790 litres of water per litre of ethanol.

Maize: ~4,670 litres of water per litre of ethanol.

Sugarcane: ~3,630 litres of water per litre of ethanol.

Growing 1 kg of rice needs about 3,000-5,000 litres of water. And One tonne of rice yields only about 470 L of ethanol.

Which means to produce just 470 litre of ethanol requires 30 Lakh - 50 Lakh litres of water.

Maize and rice accounted for nearly 69 per cent of the ethanol supplied, while Sugarcane based feed stocks accounted for 31 per cent of the total ethanol produce.

>NITI Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) has warned that by 2030, groundwater in 21 major cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai, could reach zero.

>India’s total ethanol production capacity stands at 1,822 crore litres, with a disproportionate share concentrated in already water-stressed states.

>Maharashtra, for instance, hosts plants with a combined capacity of 396 crore litres, even as farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada struggle for drinking water.

>Meanwhile, ethanol plants in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are drawing from the same groundwater reserves that have been flagged as critically depleted.

>Similarly, for years, farmers in Punjab and Haryana were blamed for depleting groundwater. Now those same crops are being used to make fuel at an industrial scale and is being called green energy.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/ethanol-blending-india-water-crisis-rice-fuel-policy-groundwater-depletion-niti-aayog-warning-2903103-2026-04-29

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/agri-business/maize-now-accounts-for-close-to-half-of-ethanol-produced-in-the-country/article70652140.ece