With oil prices down, the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority has termed it the “best time” to impose a Rs2 cess on fuel to generate a corpus of Rs80,000 crore over five years, sufficient to fuel Government’s vision of making India Euro VI compliant by 2020. The panel also felt that till Euro VI norms bridge the gap between petrol and diesel emissions, purchase of diesel cars must invite an additional excise duty of Rs81,000 as proposed by a committee headed by former Planning Commission member Kirit Parikh. This again could mop up Rs50,000 crore over five years till Euro VI becomes mandatory, it pointed out.
The recommendations by the environmental panel comprising former bureaucrat Bhure lal and environmentalist Sunita Narain came in response to an affidavit by the Centre proposing a timeline to supply Bharat Standard IV (BS-IV) fuel across India by 2017 and to “consider” upgrading to BS-VI or Euro VI by 2020. To make these targets achievable and Delhi to breathe easy, the EPCA worked out the economics by pegging the total cost of producing the Euro VI fuel at Rs80,000 crore. “If Rs2 cess is imposed for clean fuel then Rs20,000 crore is generated each year (based on current consumption). This will be sufficient over the next five years to bring Indian refineries to world standards and supply best fuel (10 ppm sulphur and below).”
Asking the court to act swiftly, the panel said, “This is the best time to introduce clean fuel as oil prices are very low.” Seen from the health angle, this investment will be most beneficial, considering the fact that the present standard of BS-III and BS-IV fuel prevailing in Delhi pose a health hazard besides increasing pollution load in the city, it said.
But the panel did not favour waiting till 2017 to ready BS-IV fuel across country and sought advancement of deadline to the present year. “Truck traffic is a major contributor to pollution and its impact can only be reduced once Euro IV is introduced,” the committee said. Even as on date, India is lagging behind Europe by 10 years on achieving BS-IV standards. Due to this delay, trucks which pass Delhi offset the little improvement the Capital has achieved since 1999 with the introduction of CNG in public transport.
As evidence, the panel showed graphs showing night-time pollution to be at peak in Delhi caused due to trucks transiting Delhi. Diesel emissions are another cause to worry about. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies diesel emissions to be the highest with cancer-causing potential. Even the road dust, shown as major pollutants of Delhi air, is not safe to inhale, added the panel, as its chemical analysis revealed high level of toxic chemicals and metals in critically high concentrations associated with severe health effects.