Of immediate concern for the Government and the automotive industry is the widespread environmental degradation caused by pollution from vehicular emissions, and as part of the global drive every effort is being made to reduce the number of vehicles plying on roads. It is an irony that an increasingly higher number of vehicles of different categories are being turned out, with a proportionate growth in demand for them.
In the process, the vehicle industry is constantly beset with problems like hike in fuel prices at regular intervals following increase in world crude prices. In this context, the Government move to encourage bus transport with its offer to carry more passengers and the growing trend among individual vehicle owners to switch over to sharing of vehicles for daily commuting are most welcome.
Also encouraging are the partly successful bid to depend least on diesel and petrol and instead use alternate fuels like natural gas for vehicles, LPG and CNG, as well as the proposed shift to electric energy and hybrid technology.
Against this backdrop comes the alarming report based on the Clean Air Asia study presented at the recent Better Air Quality 2012 conference in Hong Kong that road transport and electricity are major sources of CO2 emissions in Asia, emitting a staggering 5.26 billion tons of gas an year. In fact, CO2 emissions from road transport which rise faster than the GDP growth in Asian countries are expected to double in the next seven years.
Coal continues to dominate as the main electricity source and contributes to 91 per cent of CO2 emissions from power in the region, despite the fact that Asia’s per capita electricity consumption at 1,501 kwh is far below the European average of 8,483 kwh.
The overall scenario turns murkier when the study points out that trucks constituting only nine per cent of Asia’s total vehicle population account for almost 54 per cent of CO2 emissions from road transport in the region. This necessitates launch of national green fleet programme, as done by China, by all the Asian countries.
As regards electricity, the per capita consumption of which is 11 per cent in China as compared to the average six per cent elsewhere, Singapore has demonstrated that it is possible to reduce emissions intensity through an energy efficiency policy aimed at curbing consumption of electricity and resort to private vehicle ownership.
The role of renewable energy in the overall drive to slow down growth in emissions from electricity generation cannot be ignored. India as an emerging Asian power has necessarily to adjust its clean air drive to the fast-changing developments in order to keep afloat in the competitive environment.