Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday confirmed that his Ministry still aimed to implement introduction of the cleaner Bharat Stage-VI fuel in the country by 2020, notwithstanding the substantial resistance to the proposal from automakers.
“We already have BS-III, equivalent to Euro-III specifications, across the country and BS-IV, in major cities, which will shortly be extended to the entire country. A revised Auto Fuel Policy is in the offing which will lead to the introduction of BS-VI fuels by 2020,” Mr. Pradhan said while speaking at a workshop on ‘Carbon Emission Management’.
While the earlier plan was to implement BS-V by 2020 and BS-VI by 2024, the Petroleum Ministry sought to skip BS-V and directly implement BS-VI standards by 2020. This has met huge resistance from the automobile industry.
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had written to the government explaining that the technology in BS-VI engines was substantially different from that in BS-V engines making it unviable to skip the BS-V stage entirely. Each stage of new technology had to be validated over 6-7 lakh kilometres, and could not be developed simultaneously, K.K. Gandhi, Executive Director (Tech) SIAM, had told The Hindu when the proposal to skip BS-V was first made earlier this year.
Roads Secretary Vijay Chhibber was also outspoken with his views on the proposal. He had, in August, said that his ministry’s technical experts had confirmed that there was a substantial technological shift between BS-IV and BS-VI, and that skipping BS-V was therefore unviable.
During his speech, Mr. Pradhan also mentioned India’s progress in improving its renewable energy capacities.
“Between 2002 and 2015, the share of renewable grid capacity has increased over six times, from 2 per cent to around 13 per cent from a mix of sources including wind power, small hydro power, biomass power and cogeneration, waste to power and solar power,” he said, reiterating what India had conveyed in India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“We have scaled up our targets for renewable energy capacity addition from 30 gigawatts by 2016-17 to 175 gigawatts by 2021-22, which will result in abatement of over 326 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year,” the Minister added.
Mr. Pradhan’s statements and India’s promises come into focus in light of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris from November 30, 2015.
