Towards cleaner air for all

CLEARING THE AIR
Towards cleaner air for all
Deccan Herald

An adoption of improved fuel and emission standards would help to greatly reduce vehicular pollution.

Opportunities to improve air quality all over the country through radical changes to fuel and automobile emission standards have received a significant boost with Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab finally joining the rest of the country in moving to Euro II equivalent standards. In 11 specified cities, including Bangalore, higher grade Euro III equivalent petrol and diesel has been made mandatory since April, while Lucknow and Sholapur joined the ‘charmed 11’ in June.

It is worth asking if the improvements in air quality expected to be realised by adopting the new norms are worth the thousands of crores that petroleum refineries are spending to improve fuel quality. In response, if we consider diesel-powered commercial vehicles weighing over 3.5 tonnes meeting Bharat Stage III (BS III) rather than BS I vehicular emission standards, it would mean that the emissions of the oxides of nitrogen (NOx), hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM) would come down by at least 37 per cent, 40 per cent, 53 per cent and 72 per cent respectively. All these products (NOx, HC, CO and PM), when sufficiently concentrated, are suspected to be carcinogenic or otherwise seriously harmful to health. For cars and other light duty vehicles, the reductions would be greater at nearly 59 per cent for HC and NOx taken together, 76 per cent for CO and 74 per cent for PM. Also, petrol-engined motorcycles and scooters would reduce their HC plus NOx and CO emissions by half.

While these figures are for new vehicles, older vehicles will also benefit because of the considerable improvement in fuel quality while going from the use of Euro I to Euro III equivalent fuel. For example, the better diesel has less than 350 parts per million of sulphur as against 2,500 in the regular diesel (86 per cent less) while the new petrol has less than one per cent benzene as against five per cent in the regular one. With sulphur levels directly contributing to particulate emissions and some benzene-related combustion products known to be carcinogenic, merely using the new fuels will directly improve air quality substantially.

While reducing polluting vehicular emissions is the primary advantage of the new fuels, the fuel consumption is also likely to reduce significantly because of the improved efficiency of engines burning the new diesel and petrol. Euro III diesel has a minimum cetane number (a standard measure of ignition quality) of 51, up from 48, while the corresponding petrol has an octane number (an ‘anti-knock’ index) of 91 instead of 88. The higher cetane number could lead to a five per cent reduction in diesel consumption — significant considering that India already uses 40 million tonnes annually. Similar savings could be achieved with 91-octane petrol. Combining the savings on petrol and diesel, our annual oil import bill would be shaved by well over 600 million dollars, even if crude drops to $40 a barrel.

At the policy level, setting up Euro III fuel islands can best be described as window-dressing, with ironically even the the national capital region — the largest and politically most sensitive area — likely to drown in a sea of pollution surrounded as it will be by vehicles plying in adjacent areas while running on Euro II diesel. A similar argument applies to Bangalore with the Bangalore Rural district, leave alone Kolar and Tumkur, subject to much looser fuel and emission standards.

It would make environmental, economic and logistical sense to ensure that all fuel outlets in the districts through which the ‘golden quadrilateral’ and the primary north-south (Srinagar to Kanyakumari) and east-west (Porbandar to Silchar) national highways pass, dispense only Euro III fuel. This would greatly benefit all the citizens of those districts by significantly reducing harmful vehicular pollution. The rest of India could gradually move to Euro III petrol and diesel over the next two years with BS III vehicle emission standards being made universal six months later, from April 2008.

Only then would the long-term benefits of improved fuel and emission standards become available to all.