Euro-II emission standards for petrol vehicles manufactured or imported after July

[Naveed Yaseen]

Ministry of Environment has decided to enforce Euro-II emission standards for all new petrol driven imported and locally manufactured vehicles from July this year and the same standard would be applicable for diesel driven automobiles from July 2012.

According to a senior official of the Environment Ministry, the decision to introduce Euro-II standards was taken to effectively control air pollution caused by the vehicles. The ministry has set Euro-II emission standards as the benchmark to measure vehicular emissions in the country.

Under Euro-II emission standards, a petrol driven vehicle could only emit 2.2 gram/kilometre (g/km) carbon monoxide and 0.5 g/km hydrocarbons + nitrogen oxides (HC+NOx). However, for diesel driven automobiles, the standard would be 1 g/km carbon monoxide and 0.9 g/km hydrocarbons + nitrogen oxides (HC+NOx).

All petrol driven vehicles, both imported and locally manufactured, would comply with the Euro-II emissions standards with effect from July. Whereas July 1, 2012 deadline has been set for the diesel-run vehicles. For this, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources will make Euro-II compliant diesel with low sulphur available by January 2012.

Moreover, to reduce air pollution, the environment and petroleum ministries have promoted the use of CNG-run vehicles, and presently over two million vehicles have already been converted to natural gas. Similarly, the government has decided to introduce 8,000 CNG buses in major cities of the country.

Through Vehicular Emission Testing System (Vets) of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) over 40,000 vehicles have already been checked for their emissions in collaboration with the Islamabad Traffic Police so far.

These standards are a set of requirements defining acceptable limits for vehicle emissions. Pakistan has yet to implement these emission standards in order to introduce environment-friendly vehicles. It has missed the earlier deadline, which was July 1, 2008 for Euro-II compliance in the case of petrol and the new deadline is July 1, 2009. Similarly, Euro-II compliance deadline for diesel has been extended and the new deadline is July 1, 2012.

He said in order to comply with Euro-II standards the refineries were needed to be upgraded which required heavy investment. However, the refineries are working to produce Euro-II compliant petrol and diesel but the production cost is very high.

It may be mentioned here that the world is now moving towards Euro-III and Euro-IV fuel emission standards to protect the environment and keeping with that trend the developing world has to adopt European emission standards.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=176972