STATES: DELHI

Out Of Steam

Four months after Delhi's public transport switched to CNG, the problem of implementation raises doubts about the feasibility of using a single green fuel

By Malini Goyal with Supriya Bezbaruah

The drive towards greening Delhi seems to be facing a red light. CNG (compressed natural gas) is in the news less for having lessened pollution than for causing mile-long queues at gas stations, apart from road chaos and flash strikes. Autorickshaw and bus drivers are spending up to 10 hours a day to get fuel and commuters are harassed. The Delhi Government is losing about Rs 50,000 daily as almost 50 per cent of its DTC fleet is lying idle. To top it all, safety too is becoming an issue with the third CNG-related blast in six months . There are 11,000 cars, 25,000 autorickshaws and 1,600 buses running either on converted or new CNG engines. But out of the target of 80 gas stations, Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL), the company responsible for CNG supply in Delhi has got only 47.

The problem is not whether CNG is a clean fuel but simply that Delhi's successive governments failed in every respect-planning, implementation and monitoring-and showed a complete lack of vision. Despite the two-year deadline and a clearcut roadmap given by the Supreme Court, infrastructure has not kept pace. The number of vehicles converting to CNG was far above the government's estimates. Four months after the Supreme Court's ultimatum to run all commercial transport vehicles on CNG and other clean fuel, Delhi has plenty of CNG vehicles but incredibly, not enough of the fuel. Says Parvez Hashmi, minister of transport, Delhi: "Ram Naik (Union minister for petroleum and natural gas) was talking about abundant CNG in March. Today he says he does not have enough." But scoring political points is of no help to the hapless commuter.

From 1998, the pollution has visibly reduced. The concentration of suspended particulate matter (SPM), carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide at the busy ITO intersection has come down by 15 per cent, 34.5 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. Says Anumita Roy Choudhary, coordinator, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE): "We are very late in stipulating fuel standards. By converting to CNG, we have made a quantum jump."

But since 1998 experts have argued based on many studies that CNG is not necessarily the only option before Delhi. Though data on emission from various fuels vary widely, depending on the sources, the ultra low sulphur diesel (ULSD, also called Euro III) compares reasonably well with CNG when fitted with a special filtering device. CNG, as compared to ULSD (to be brought in by 2004-5) emits more carbon oxide, less nitrogen oxide and marginally higher particulate matter (see chart).

In the last few years the levels of particulate matter in Delhi have come down from a peak of 409 microgram per cubic metre to 370 in 2000. However, the levels of nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide at 31 and 5.450 microgram per cubic metre respectively that have not been contained.