Cars fouling Asian air but high-tech offers hope

Cars fouling Asian air but high-tech offers hope

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Toxic emissions from vehicles are the leading cause of air pollution in Asia but stepped-up collaboration within the region and new technology for "greener" cars offer hope for a cleaner environment, experts say.

Vehicle emissions pose a greater threat than industrial emissions as they are close to ground level and are constantly swirled in the air by passing traffic, Jitendra Shah, senior environmental engineer with the World Bank, told Reuters.

According to the World Health Organization, four to eight percent of all deaths in the Asia-Pacific region are due to air pollution.

Stricter standards and better enforcement have cut airborne industrial pollutants in most of Asia, Shah said on the sidelines of a transport technology conference organized by DaimlerChrysler and Singapore's Economic Development Board on Wednesday.

"The number of vehicles has been growing in all of these cities and so the trend from vehicular emissions is generally up," Shah said.

"Even though the newer vehicles emit less, your base is getting much larger and the number of vehicles that are scrapped is relatively very low."

In a bid to address air pollution issues in the region, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank launched the Clean Air Initiative in February with officials from eight Asian cities.

Through a series of workshops, the program strives to share knowledge and expedite pilot air quality projects.

Singapore and Hong Kong were clearly ahead of the game, with Bangkok having the best air quality among developing Asian mega cities with more than 10 million people, Shah said.

"Much needs to be done if you look at the air quality trend in cities of Manila, Jakarta, Dhaka. It's not getting any better," he said.

Vehicle makers have been trying to tackle the root of the problem by creating low- and zero-emission vehicles.

DaimlerChrysler, which previewed a working model of its zero- emission car at the conference, expects its new vehicles to land in selected customers' hands in California, Germany, Singapore and Tokyo in 2004.

The hydrogen fuel cell uses compressed hydrogen gas and oxygen to produce electricity to power the car and water as the emission.

But full commercialization of the car will not take place until 2010, Dr Ferdinand Panik, a DaimlerChrysler vice president and head of the fuel cell project, told Reuters.

"To make something of the technology, to get feedback from the field, to stimulate the introduction of this (car) or the building up of this infrastructure -- all these things have to go in parallel," Panik said.

Building up the facilities to refuel the cars with compressed hydrogen gas will pose a major challenge, he said.

DaimlerChrysler's fuel cell car generates 75 kilowatts of power, enough to run 15 households, hits top speeds of 140 km per hour and runs for about 200 km on one charge. But it takes up to three minutes to warm up.

Tech-savvy Singapore hopes to drive the adoption of such cars, announcing initiatives to push the private and public sectors together and become a test bed for green vehicle technology.

"This program...may eventually go beyond transport applications to include stationary power and other energy applications," Communications and Information Technology Minister Yeo Cheow Tong said in a speech to the conference.