perspective
Fighting
gas emissions
Dr Anup Bandivadekar
PTA News Bureau
China and India, the world’s most
populous nations and fastest growing
economies, are also the world’s largest
emitters of green house gas emissions.
While China surpassed the United States
to clinch the dubious record, India is in
fourth place.
Dr Anup Bandivadekar, who is heading
the passenger vehicle programme at
the Washington DC-based International
Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT),
says motor vehicles continue to be a
major source of air pollution, which is
causing public health problems.
“The automobile industry is both a major
20 POLYMERS & TYRE ASIA FEBRUARY/MARCH 2011
There is a clutch of workable
solutions to reduce the carbon
footprint of automobiles
in China and India.
Dr Anup Bandivadekar, who
is heading the passenger
vehicle programme at the
Washington DC-based
International Council on Clean
Transportation (ICCT), says
there are many innovative
ways to develop a more
sustainable energy and
transportation system
driver and a beneficiary of economic
growth in China and India,” he told
Polymers & Tyre Asia in an interview.
“The near quadrupling of vehicle sales
over the past decade is not without its
environmental consequences.”
Increasing consumption of petroleum
products by motor vehicles is not only
a burden on energy security, but also a
contributor to global climate change. “The
governments of India and China have
already undertaken some initial steps to
mitigate these problems, but much more
could be done,” he said.
Dr Bandivadekar’s current focus of
research is on developing frameworks and
methods to foster innovative solutions
towards achieving a more sustainable
energy and transportation system. At
ICCT, his work is aimed at reducing air
pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
from passenger vehicles globally.
Before coming to ICCT, he was a
postdoctoral fellow in the Sloan
Automotive Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of technology
(MIT), where he evaluated vehicle and fuel
technologies that can significantly reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum
consumption from the US light-duty fleet
over the next 30 years.
Commenting on the major initiatives that
China and India should take to improve
the environmental performance and
efficiency of cars, trucks, buses and
public transportation systems in general,
Dr Bandivadekar said that these two
huge countries have already initiated fuel
consumption standards.
“Since 2005, China has established
mandatory fuel consumption standards
for passenger cars, followed by standards
for light commercial vehicles in 2008 and
two/three wheelers in 2009,” he noted.
These fuel consumption standards are
being progressively tightened and will
reduce the rate of growth of greenhouse
gas emissions from such vehicles.
“Currently, the Chinese government is in
the process of developing appropriate
fuel consumption standards for heavy
commercial vehicles as well,” he said
adding that India also needs to quickly
follow the lead of China in establishing
fuel economy standards for motor
vehicles.
Dr Bandivadekar, who holds a Bachelor
of Engineering degree from University
of Mumbai, a Master of Science from
Michigan Technological University in
Mechanical Engineering as well as
MS in Technology and Policy and a
PhD in Engineering Systems from MIT,
believes both China and India could also
rationalise their vehicle tax structure to
promote vehicle efficiency.
Fuel quality
“As outlined in a forthcoming ICCT
publication on fiscal policies to promote
vehicle fuel economy, China and India
could benefit from varying vehicle tax
structure in proportion to the vehicle fuel
consumption and/or CO2 emissions,” Dr
Bandivadekar said.
To promote in-use fuel efficiency, both
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 perspective
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Fighting gas emissions
countries need to encourage eco-driving,
but also adopt efficiency standards for
tyres such as those being adopted in
Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Much remains to be done in both
countries in reducing vehicular air
pollution. Both will benefit richly by
introducing cleaner, ultra-low sulphur
(<15 ppm) fuels and adopting Euro
VI equivalent emission standards for
vehicles and fuels.
This will help in dramatically lowering
particulate emission from growing fleet of
diesel passenger and freight vehicles.
The technologies to reduce emissions
to this level are already available in the
global market. So, the governments
in the two countries could adopt these
emission standards very quickly.
He said committing to make ultra-
low sulphur fuel available nationwide
within next five years is the single most
important step that the governments
in India and China can take towards
reducing air pollution from motor vehicles.
China and India have both managed to
reduce the sulphur content in gasoline
and diesel to 150 ppm and 350 ppm
respectively, although several cities have
lower sulphur fuels.
In order to implement advanced after-
treatment devices such as selective
catalytic reduction (SCR) and diesel
particulate filter( DPF), it is imperative to
have ultra-low sulphur fuels (<15 ppm
sulphur) available nationwide.
A lack of such fuels could make vehicles
fitted with advanced after-treatment
systems ineffective, he noted.
Commenting on tighter fuel standards,
Dr Bandivadekar said as far as fuels
are concerned, China and India should
explore the feasibility of a low carbon fuel
standard (LCFS), which is currently under
consideration in Europe and the United
States.
“However, special care must be taken
not to encourage production of fuel that
affect production of food, and have a large
land use change impact. Where possible
and appropriate, use of natural gas
vehicles can reduce both air pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions.”
Key metrics
Explaining the concept of ‘choice of
24 POLYMERS & TYRE ASIA FEBRUARY/MARCH 2011
regulated metric’ for green mobility,
he said it is about regulating fuel
consumption. Typically, countries that
have been more concerned about
energy security have chosen to regulate
fuel consumption (l/100km or litres of
fuel consumed per 100km of distance
travelled), or fuel economy (km/l or
kilometres of distance travelled per litre
of fuel).
On the other hand, countries/regions
more concerned about climate change
have regulated greenhouse gas emissions
(gCO2e/km or greenhouse gas emissions
on CO2 equivalent basis per kilometre of
distance travelled).
“The specific advantage of GHG standards
is that they can include emissions of
greenhouse gases other than CO2 such
as methane, and N2O,” Dr Bandivadekar
said.
These metrics are largely interchangeable,
since the carbon intensity of various
fuels is known. “Of course, the metric
of fuel consumption and greenhouse
gas emission have an advantage of
being linear. In other words, reducing
fuel consumption from 20 l/100km to
15 l/100km saves the same amount of
fuel as reducing fuel consumption from
15l/100km to 10 l/100km. On the other
hand, improving fuel economy from 10
km/l to 15 km/l will save more fuel than
improving fuel economy from 15 km/l to
20 km/l.”
Nevertheless, due to interchangeability
of these metrics, it doesn’t matter much
in the end what metric is chosen. More
efficient vehicles will be promoted under
any of these standards.
On the benefits of introduction of
corporate average standards in China
and India where the automobile industry
is booming, Dr Bandivadekar explained
that China has already made a decision
to enforce fuel consumption standards
on a corporate average basis starting
with Phase III of the fuel consumption
standards.
“The Chinese standards divide the
fleet in 16 different weight classes. The
manufacturers’ compliance with the
standards will be determined by the
sales-weighted fuel consumption and
sales-weighted vehicle mass for that
manufacturer.”
As long as the sales-weighted fuel
consumption is lower than the standard
corresponding to the sales-weighted
vehicle mass, the manufacturer will be
in compliance with the standards, even
though individual vehicle models may lie
above or below the standards for their
own weight classes.”
It appears that India is also developing
a weight-based fuel economy standard,
similar in design to the EU CO2 standard.
This would be a welcome development,
although the ICCT believes that size-
based standards are superior to mass-
based standards because the size-based
standards promote vehicle lightweighting.
Three steps
Dr Bandivadekar believes that there
are three most effective steps that
governments can take to reduce carbon
footprint:
1. Establish progressively tighter fuel
economy standards. If the standards are
to be varied as per a vehicle attribute,
the vehicle size should be preferred over
mass as the basis for standards.
2. Align fiscal incentives for motor vehicles
with fuel consumption. This can be done
by reforming the existing taxes based on
vehicle engine size and/or percentage
of vehicle price to make these taxes
proportional to the vehicle CO2 emissions.
3. Establish comparative labelling
programmes that give consumers
adequate information on how to choose a
vehicle with low carbon footprint.
A recent report has shown that although
there have been massive increases
in emissions in China and India, their
average CO2 emissions per inhabitant,
in 2009, is still below those in industrial
countries.
In India the emissions were 1.4 tonnes
per person and in China this was 6
tonnes, compared with 10 tonnes per
person in the Netherlands and 17 tonnes
in the US.
But that is no reason to remain
complacent about growing carbon
footprint. While standards are necessary
to push auto manufacturers to deploy
more efficient technologies, fiscal
incentives and consumer education
efforts can pull the technologies in the
marketplace.
Dr Bandivadekar advocates that policy-
makers in China and India should exploit
synergies among these policies, rather
than pursuing them independently.