NEW DELHI, December 14: The Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based NGO fighting for clean air in Delhi, has picked up cudgels against the Delhi transport minister, Parvez Hashmi, for once again attempting to mislead the Supreme Court and the public about the merit of moving the buses to CNG as directed by the Supreme Court. Hashmi has recently been quoted in the press saying that the "Delhi government is going to submit an affidavit in the court saying that the CNG technology being introduced in DTC buses is an unproven one…. I am blindly spending public money on an unproven technology. We don’t want CNG……" While running out of time to meet the final deadline of March 31, 2001, the transport minister appears to be desperate to find excuses for non-implementation of the order, naturally to escape the likely chastisement from the bench when the matter comes up for hearing close to the deadline. More so because the Delhi government has not yet given an undertaking on the implementation of the order as asked by the Court orders on March 31, 2000.

Hashmi’s callous dismissal of a serious public health problem in the capital has incensed CSE. While addressing the press conference in the Capital today Anil Agarwal, chairperson, Centre for Science and Environment, said Hashmi should retract his irresponsible statement and give a clear plan of action with a time frame for the implementation of the order. The minister can do little else to salvage the situation as he will not be able to meet the deadline in any case now. At the latest tally there are only 140 CNG buses on road and a pending order for 1000 more buses. By March 31, 2001 the government will be able to add only 500 buses at the most – a far shot from 10,000 strong CNG bus fleet mandated by the Supreme Court. .

Agarwal said any slippage on the CNG strategy cannot be allowed as Delhi is reeling under severe particulate pollution load killing one person per hour. He presented the results of a recent emission model developed by CSE to estimate the trend in emission load from different policy measures that show implementation of the court order to move all buses to CNG is critical to get anywhere near the clean air targets by 2010. CSE has developed this model to understand how would all the policy measures directed by the Supreme Court would help to control emissions. No one yet knows precisely how these court orders will help as in the meantime the numbers of vehicles are also going to increase exponentially. This model has been developed by the systems unit and the air pollution control unit in CSE with the help of a large number of experts in India and abroad.

Delhi faces the challenge of reducing particulate pollution by as much as 85-90 per cent from the current levels. Moving buses to CNG is one significant step forward to ensure substantial reduction in the particulate pollution load in the capital. The results from the CSE study shows that only gradual tightening of the emissions standards for diesel buses will be far less effective in controlling particulate pollution than the CNG buses. Particulate emissions from CNG buses are almost negligible. But even if for the sake of comparison we assume that the current CNG buses on road pollute as much as a Euro IV compliant diesel bus, the particulate emission from 15 CNG buses today will still be better than 1 diesel bus meeting India 2000 norms . Euro IV diesel buses are likely to come to India only at the end of the decade as professed by the Society for Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). Why should we wait that long to get the same results if moving to CNG straightaway can achieve the same levels today?

Agarwal emphasised that if the government had been sincere about implementing the court order of moving all buses to CNG as scheduled then we would have been able to avoid as much as 7298 tonnes of additional particulate pollution over the next 10 years. This is extremely serious from the point of public health as this additional pollution load that will be generated from diesel buses will lead to an enormous number of deaths – possibly an additional one person per day over the next ten years.

If left to Hashmi’ scheme of things then may be there will be little progress beyond implementing Euro II norms for buses in 2003, skip Euro III norms altogether and introduce Euro IV norms as late as 2008 as per SIAM’s future road map of emission norms announced earlier. CSE study shows that if we ignore CNG strategy and move to Euro II norms for buses in 2003 and Euro III norms in 2005 then we will avoid only 730 tonnes of particulate load as opposed to 7298 tonnes if all buses had moved to CNG by March 2001.

This will be absolutely criminal keeping in mind that the city has the highest level of respirable particulate matter of less than 10 micron size (PM10) in the world. This year the peak levels of PM10 have already reached 5 times the standards (586 microgramme per cum) in ITO. More data pouring in from 6 other sites where monitoring of PM10 levels have just begun in July show that in a residential site like Ashok Vihar levels have crossed 10 times (1015 microgramme per cum) the daily standard of 100 microgramme per cum. This is absolutely shocking keeping in mind the WHO mandate that there is no safe level for particulate pollution and even at an extremely low level and with small increase it can trigger serious health problems like cancer. It is expected to get worse in November and December this year when stable and cold weather conditions will aggravate pollution levels. Data from the last year shows that the maximum number of days with very high pollution levels are recorded in winter months. This leads to more hospital admissions with cardiac and respiratory symptoms in the Capital – as much as 900 per cent increase in asthma cases in December 1998 over the previous month, was reported by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Moving out of diesel is a very important strategy not only to reduce total particulate pollution but also to reduce toxicity of particulate pollution as diesel particles are now known to be one of the most toxic. In fact Swedish studies have found that after taking into account all the toxic components in emissions, the cancer potency level of Euro I diesel car exhaust is double that of petrol cars in India. Even more frightening is the fact that if only particulate emissions are compared then the cancerous effect of diesel particulate matter from one new diesel car is equal to that of 24 new petrol cars and 81 compressed natural gas cars on roads. If such studies are extrapolated to diesel buses the results could be even more alarming.

Hashmi wants the Supreme Court to believe that CNG is an unproven technology when the world over there is a growing concern over the extremely harmful effects of diesel particulate and plans are afoot to phase in alternative fuel vehicles to replace diesel vehicles. More than 10 lakh CNG vehicles are plying in different parts of the world, Argentina, Italy, Russia and the US with the highest share. Various factors at work are expected to expand the natural gas vehicle market dramatically in the years to come in the US. Most important is the thrust on clean fuels and extremely stringent regulations for diesel and petrol vehicles in the offing. While nearly, 20 per cent of all new bus orders are now alternative fuel vehicles, half of the agencies surveyed by the General Accounting Office, US, showed that all but one, are buying 100 per cent alternative fuel buses.

The US government is even encouraging Interstate Clean Transportation Corridors (ICTC) so that trucks can move from one state to another using CNG. One such ICTC already connects several Clean Cities in the West, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Reno. The latest move against diesel buses is the new regulation slapped by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, California mandating that if any public fleet operator of 15 or more vehicles wants to purchase new vehicle or replace old vehicles, he must do so with alternative fuel vehicles from July 1, 2000. The rules categorically state that alternative fuels do not include vehicles running on gasoline or diesel but include fuels like CNG, propane, methanol, electricity, and fuel cells. Similarly, China’s tenth five year plan is giving an impetus to hybrid and fuel cell vehicles in a big way. This has happened as a result of the People’s Congress making it mandatory for the government to publicise air quality data on a daily basis. This data created an uproar and got hybrids included in the five year plan. China already has 6,000 vehicles running on CNG. Japan is also getting rid of diesel in a big way and this was the result of a public litigation in the court slapped by people living close to highways and exposed to diesel particles.

CSE is extremely concerned over the obstructionist stance of the Delhi government. It is time that the transport minister and his colleagues in the Delhi government learnt what it will mean in terms of escalating pollution load and higher death toll in the city if the government fails to implement the order on CNG.

Air pollution control unit: Anumita Roychowdhury, Chandrachur Ghose, Lopamudra Banerjee