Kong Ha
Senior Officer, Motor Vehicle Emissions, Hong Kong Environment Protection Department

Having a responsive government helps. When the air pollution levels in Hong Kong reached the highest ever levels on March 29, 2000, a huge public outcry followed, demanding government action to bring down the pollution levels. The government responded swiftly by instituting a task force implement measures to control vehicular emissions, to monitor effectiveness of control measures and take further actions based on the impact. The task force set a target of reducing particulate emissions by 80 per cent and nitrogen oxides by 30 per cent by the end of 2005.

Realising that soft actions wouldn’t help achieve such difficult target, the government went ahead with harsh measures in very little time.

Hong Kong became the first city in Asia to introduce ultra low sulphur diesel (ULSD), with sulphur content of 50 parts per million (ppm), from 2000. In addition, new petrol private cars were asked to meet Euro III standards from 2001. These norms were implemented in Europe from 2000 and India plans to introduce them only from 2005, and that too only in few polluted cities. Diesel cars in Hong Kong were asked to meet the most stringent California emission norms at the same time.

Moreover, Hong Kong established the world’s most stringent smoke density standards for heavy-duty diesel vehicles at 35 Hartridge Smoke Unit (HSU). The standard in India is 65 HSU. The consequence of such stringent standard has been the reduction in number of smoky vehicles spotted per hour from 11 in December 1998 to about 4 in September 2003

These regulatory measures were supplemented by a fiscal policy too. When the city introduced unleaded petrol in 1991, it was sold at a price lesser by 1 Hong Kong Dollar for the first year. Similarly, the ULSD was also sold at a concession of 0.11 US Dollar. As a result ULSD gained 100 per cent market share by August 2000.

The Hong Kong government is also aggressively pursuing retrofitment of aftertreatment systems like diesel oxidation catalysts and particulate traps in the diesel buses. At present about 2,600 buses are running with oxidation catalysts and about 500 buses on particulate traps.

Supplementing these measures with running taxis and light buses on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the government is certain to achieve its emission targets.

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Proactive approaches in China: Regulatory process to accelerate the technology roadmap

Lixin Fu
Director, Air Pollution Research Institute, Tsinghua University, China

Beijing, which faces similar air quality problems as Delhi, is going to host the Olympics in 2008. While the Western media has talked much about the levels of pollution, the phenomenal strides taken by the Chinese government to clean up the air of the capital and other urban areas have not been reported that widely. China is now surging ahead with an aggressive schedule of stringent emission norms and alternative fuel programmes for its vehicles.

In Beijing, it was the air quality reporting system that raised public awareness and consequently generated the pressure to bring in the political will to act, according to Lixin Fu, of Tsinghua University, Beijing. Taking advantage of the Chinese Clean Air Act, which allows more stringent local regulations than the national law, Beijing introduced Euro I standards for its vehicles ahead of the rest of the country. The city also implemented Euro II norm from 2002 when it is mandated for the rest of the country from 2005-06. Now it plans to implement Euro III for petrol vehicles from 2005 and Euro IV for light-duty diesel vehicles at the same time. The entire country plans to move to Euro III only in 2008.

Not only advanced norms, major financial incentives are also given to vehicles meeting advanced norms ahead of their scheduled requirement. Thus, there was a 30 per cent tax reduction for cars meeting Euro II when they were required to meet Euro I only. As a result of the incentive, almost all new cars started meeting Euro II norms within one year, says Lixin.

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Emission benefits of gaseous fuel strategy

Nils-Olof Nylund, Chief Research Scientist, VTT Processes Energy Production

Is natural gas a solution to both local and global environmental problems posed by vehicles? Yes, says Nils-Olof Nylund of VTT processes, Finland. It provides significant emissions reduction particularly when replacing low grade liquid fuels in unsophisticated vehicles. Emission reduction comes even when compared to vehicle technologies and fuel qualities of the early 21^st century. Gaseous fuels give lowest overall emissions in all conditions, says Nylund.

Studies conducted by the International Association for Natural Gas Vehicles show that Euro III buses even when run on low sulphur diesel and continuously regenerating particulate traps emitted more particulate matter than CNG buses, whether on oxidation catalyst or three-way catalyst. Exhaust from the CNG buses were much better even in terms of mutagenicity and non-regulated emissions like aldehydes. Carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in CNG emissions were found to be below detectible limit.

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LPG programme in Hong Kong

Kong Ha, Senior Officer, Motor Vehicle Emissions Group, Environmental Protection Department, Hong Kong

According to Kong Ha, 98 per cent of particulates and 75 per cent of nitrogen oxides emissions from vehicles come only from diesel vehicles. Therefore, to be able to meet the emissions reduction target of 80 per cent for particulates and 30 per cent for nitrogen oxides, the government of Hong Kong has taken up a programme to replace diesel vehicles by alternative fuels, besides tightening emission norms to catch up with Europe and introducing ultra low sulphur diesel (50 ppm sulphur).

The first component of this strategy as chalked out by the government is to phase out diesel light buses and taxis by those which run on LPG. When the one year trial of running 30 taxies ended in 1998, the government got the full cooperation of the industry for implementation of the programme.

The government also devised fiscal instruments to facilitate introduction of LPG as an automotive fuel. Fuel tax was waived for auto LPG and free land lease was given to existing stations to set up LPG infrastructure. Zero land premium facility was provided for setting up new LPG stations. From 2003, grants worth 5,128 US dollars was given to each taxi owner and 7,692 US dollars to each light bus owner to switchover to LPG.

As a result of this programme, almost all taxis on the roads of Hong Kong now run on LPG. Till the end of 2003, there were 310 LPG light buses on road. The government is now targeting the introduction of more LPG and electric buses in both public and private bus segment.

The gaseous fuel programme is expected to reduce particulate emissions by 29 per cent and that of nitrogen oxides by 8 per cent.

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CNG Strategy in Lahore and the role of Lahore Clean Air Commission

Hassaan Ghazali
Member, Pakistan Environmental Law Association (PELA)

On July 24, 2003 the Lahore High Court, in response to a public interest litigation, instituted the Lahore Clean Air Commission. The commission was given the tasks of collect information, analyse them, consult experts and submit a report on "the feasible and practical solutions for monitoring, controlling and improving vehicular air pollution in Lahore," says Hassaan Ghazali, member of the Commission and the Pakistan Environmental Law Association.

At present the government policies promote CNG towards taxi-cabs and private vehicles only. Out of more than 350,000 CNG vehicles in Pakistan, 100,000 vehicles are in Lahore alone.

However, LPG is used at a much wider scale in the three-wheeler segment. 70 per cent of total fleet of 40,000 rickshaws run on LPG. This is primarily due to the price advantage of LPG kits which cost Rs. 12,000 in comparison to CNG kits which cost Rs. 20,000.

The government is going ahead with a plan of introducing 100 CNG buses between 2004-2005 and another 300 buses between 2006 and 2009. There is also a plan to allow only CNG taxis between 2004-05 replacement of diesel vans/buses with CNG vans/buses by 2008. The government also plans to replace all its vehicles to run on CNG in a phased manner.

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