Clean technology
Business Standard / New Delhi November 09, 2007
Several media reports in the past few days have brought the issue of
environmental pollution back into sharp focus. One such pertained to
the findings by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) that the
pollution in Delhi is back almost to the level prior to the shift of
the entire public transport fleet to compressed natural gas (CNG). The
others referred to initiatives taken by the auto industry for testing
hydrogen-blended CNG to run vehicles, and by the Maharashtra sugar
mills to produce bio-CNG from the biomass produced as a by-product of
cane processing. Indeed, while the CSE report reflects the concern
over environmental degradation and the consequent global warming, the
other two reports are indicative of the response � however inadequate
� to this dreaded menace.

In fact, the auto industry the world over is under strain to cut down
harmful emissions by switching to safer and cheaper alternatives to
the existing fuels in view of the burgeoning cost of crude. While
plant sources-based biofuels are the front-runners among novel
vehicular fuels, hydrogen is increasingly in contention as a non-plant
based auto energy source. The plus point for hydrogen is that it
produces water vapours, instead of greenhouse gases, as exhaust. Its
mileage levels are also nearly twice that of conventional fuels.

However, neither biofuels nor hydrogen can be the panacea that the
auto industry is looking for to get rid of its environment-unfriendly
tag. This is partly because the energy needed to produce hydrogen
comes generally from existing sources and, therefore, harmful
emissions will continue to remain an issue. Also, a switch to hydrogen
or hydrogen-blended fuels will necessitate creating extensive
infrastructure of hydrogen-filling stations. Biofuels, on the other
hand, can be dispensed with from the existing infrastructure, but they
have various downsides, the most significant being that they require
scarce land and water to produce. If agricultural lands are used for
producing biofuels, as is virtually happening for making ethanol from
food, sugar and oil crops, the consequences will be disastrous.

Already, food prices are soaring and food security is threatened the
world over due to diversion of corn, sorghum and oilseeds for biofuel
production. Worse, forests are being cleared to give way to oil palm
plantations for biofuel in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia,
and for growing sugarcane in Brazil. India is no exception as it is
also taking a big gamble in putting millions of hectares under
jatropha, for which neither proven cultivation and processing
technology, nor evidence of environmental benefits exists. It can, of
course, be argued that most of the jatropha plantations are coming up
on non-cropped, partially degraded lands and hence they do not
displace food or other crops.

But, this indeed may be a myopic view. A recent paper in the journal
Science has stated that protecting uncultivated land saves, in 30
years, two to nine times more carbon emissions than what can be saved
through the use of biofuel produced from that land. Besides, such
tracks serve as vital habitats for animal and plant biodiversity.
Since land availability is already under strain in India and
elsewhere, the search for alternatives to the present fuels may
ultimately have to zero in on clean, though not necessarily green,
sources of energy.

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