Consumer Awareness and Perception of E20 Fuel in Coimbatore

The fast-tracking of the biofuel requirement in India to become 20% E85 of ethanol-petrol (E20) by 2025-26 is a significant change in the policy of national energy (in the service of decreasing the import of petroleum products and the emission of carbon into the atmosphere). This shift, however, has not been smooth at the consumer level. This paper addresses the awareness and perception of consumers towards E20 fuel in the industrial city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. With the use of a descriptive research design and quantitative approach, primary data were gathered using a stratified sample of 50 vehicle owners (structured questionnaires and interviews). The results show that there is a clear Policy-Reality Gap. Whereas awareness about the policy is relatively high at 82, the level of policy acceptance is dismal at 34. It is also found that there is a large trust deficiency,t with 64% of the consumers trusting in informal sources like local mechanics and social media to provide them with the technical information as opposed to government sources (12%). The issue of performance is prevalent, with the mean Likert scores of 4.6 and 4.7 for mileage reduction and fear of long-term engine damage, respectively. The Chi-Square test of statistical analysis (11.71 > 3.841) proves the significant correlation between the age of the vehicle and dissatisfaction, with the owners of legacy BS-III and BS-IV vehicles having an unequal financial and technical load. The paper concludes that the success of the E20 mandate requires the government to go beyond the macro-economic rationales and mention micro-level complaints of consumers by having transparent labels, technical assistance camps, and possible price compensations to provide a Just Transition for the common man.