BENGALURU: In a vehicle-choked city gasping for breath, switching to a cleaner alternative for other fossil fuels can go a long way.
GAIL Gas Ltd, the sole supplier of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), expects that Bengaluru will have nearly 2.1 lakh CNG vehicles, excluding two-wheelers, by 2021. Currently, nearly 120 four wheelers in the city run on CNG. Most of these CNG vehicles are from Maharashtra, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gujarat and a few from Karnataka.
The city has a total of 67.74 lakh vehicles and the number of vehicles is expected to touch nearly 1 crore by 2022. More vehicles means spike in vehicular pollution. Activists have been campaigning for environment-friendly CNG and electric vehicles, but, inadequate fuelling stations and lack of charging points is forcing motorists to use diesel and petrol.
GAIL Gas Ltd officials said they will set up at least 50 CNG filling stations in the city over the next three years. “We are planning to set up CNG filling stations in retail fuel outlets of IOC, BPCL and HPCL to increase the availability,” said Partha Jana, General Manager (Projects), GAIL GAS Ltd.
At present, Bengaluru has only one CNG filling station at Premnagar in Laggere. Three more in BMTC depots at Sumanahalli, Hennur and Peenya will be operational in a month’s time. “Work on setting up CNG stations will soon commence in places like Bommasandra,Tatanagar, Mysuru Road, Agara and Yeshwantpur,” said Jana.
GAIL Gas Ltd officials said retro-fitment centres have recently kicked in operations in three places — R T Nagar, Laggere and RMV 2nd Stage and so far six vehicles — five cars and one scooter — have been converted. The cost of conversion for an autorickshaw is nearly `25,000 and around `40,000 for a four-wheeler.
Officials said CNG is cheaper than petrol and diesel. “At current price of CNG, the savings in running a car on CNG in comparison to petrol is around 58 per cent, saving in running an autorickshaw compared to LPG is around 30 per cent and saving in running buses on CNG against diesel is around 34 per cent” Jana said.
In 2014, the state government had announced that 271 CNG buses will be inducted into BMTC. GAIL also identified three CNG stations in BMTC depots considering the demand. However, BMTC does not have plans to induct CNG buses for now. BMTC officials said they will soon induct 150 electric buses which are cheaper and environmental friendly than CNG buses.
General Secretary of Adarsh Autorickshaw Drivers’ Union C Sampath said state government should provide financial support to convert to CNG. “CNG autos are more efficient than electric autos but we want government subsidy.”
In the budget, the state government allocated `30 crore to provide `30,000 subsidy each to owners of two-stroke autos who want to buy four-stroke LPG autos. It has decided to phase out smoke-spewing two-stroke autorickshaws in the city from April 2018.