What is to be done about Jakarta's air?

By Gary Gentry

JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta's air quality has declined drastically in the past few years. Some recent studies by world health organizations rate Jakarta's air the third muggiest in the world. Jakarta suffers terribly from air pollution, without doubt, and residents don't need such studies to realize that. All they need to do is go for a short walk along Jalan Thamrin any week-day morning. Choking clouds of fumes cause eyes to water and throats to burn.

As a result, there have been calls recently for Indonesia to eliminate leaded gasoline. Letters to The Jakarta Post have welcomed the calls, agreeing that Jakarta's air is so badly polluted that something must be done.

Something must be done about the problem, all right, but unleaded gasoline would be a misguided and very expensive effort that would end up costing the nation huge amounts of money without solving the problem without further measures.

Gasoline is a mixture of compounds, some separated directly from crude oil, others manufactured by chemical reactions. Gasoline quality is measured in terms of "octane rating", with a higher rating indicating higher quality. Perversely, the gasoline compounds naturally occurring in crude oil are too low in octane for modern automobiles. However, a refiner can improve the octane rating of those stocks by adding a lead compound, which is cheap to do.

The refiner can also improve his "natural gasoline" by installing expensive equipment to turn it into high octane. These reactions create some by-products, so the total gasoline production from a given quantity of crude oil goes down. This means that in order to produce the same volume of unleaded gasoline, a refiner must install expensive equipment and also refine more crude oil. The result is expensive gasoline and probably more air pollution at the refinery.

"Yes, but if it reduces smog, isn't it worth it?" the general public may ask. The answer, unfortunately, is that simply taking lead out of gasoline does not reduce smog.

Smog is created when unburned fuel -- hydrocarbon -- from auto exhausts reacts with sunlight. Lead does not contribute to smog. Furthermore, unleaded gasoline does not burn any more efficiently than leaded gasoline.

In the 1970's, the United States mandated unleaded gasoline, but the regulation had nothing to do with lead pollution. In an effort to reduce hydrocarbon emissions to the atmosphere the U.S. government required all new cars to have a device in their exhaust system called a catalytic converter which completes the combustion of hydrocarbons.

Unfortunately, lead compounds in gasoline poison the catalysts, causing the converters to foul up. In order to prevent fouling up the catalytic converters, the U.S. government mandated unleaded gasoline. Reducing lead pollution was merely a nice side benefit.

Therefore, simply changing to unleaded gasoline will do nothing for Jakarta's air quality unless all gasoline engines are fitted with expensive catalytic converters -- another enormous cost attributable to unleaded gasoline.

Some countries, including Brazil and the United States, have used alcohol as a substitute for lead to enhance the octane rating of gasoline. While some success is claimed, there are several arguments against it.

First, a few drops of lead in a tankful of gasoline are enough to sufficiently improve the octane rating, while several liters of alcohol are needed to achieve the same improvement. Producing alcohol in the quantities required for motor fuel would require building large, expensive manufacturing plants and blending facilities. Furthermore, alcohol yield from most raw material is too low for economical production. While grain crops give reasonable yields, the cost of production -- fertilizers, fuel for farm machinery, and others -- makes this approach uneconomical without government subsidies. Then there is the moral issue of using food as motor fuel.

However, the real problem with unleaded gasoline for Jakarta is that a huge portion of the city's worst offending vehicles would be completely unaffected by the change. Jakarta's thousands of diesel buses do not burn gasoline, leaded or otherwise. These fuming behemoths would continue to spew out black, choking smoke screens even if leaded gasoline were to disappear entirely.

Jakarta's tens of thousands of motorcycles also would not be affected by changing to unleaded gasoline. Motorcycles are virtually all equipped with two-stroke engines, which means lubricating oil must be mixed with the gasoline, whether leaded or unleaded. Lubricating oil does not burn completely in the engine, producing smoke which contributes significantly to pollution.

So are Jakarta residents doomed to breathe ever thicker smog for the rest of their pollution-shortened lives? No if the owners of vehicles keep their engines well maintained.

First, there is an economic incentive, a well maintained engine burns less fuel than a poorly tuned one. That reduces fuel costs for individuals. Bus and taxi owners and operators will understand that if they are educated about it. A public awareness campaign on TV and in print media could handle the job.

In addition to the individual savings, reducing fuel consumption would also help the nation. Most experts predict that Indonesia will become a net importer of crude oil early in the next decade. If every vehicle in Jakarta reduced its fuel consumption by 10 percent, the reduction in oil consumption would amount to over one million tons per year!

Government can enhance the economic incentive to improve fuel efficiency in many ways such as raising the price of fuel and by enforcing emissions standards. Impossible, I hear you say? Jakarta police can't even enforce traffic laws, how can they enforce auto maintenance?

In the U.S. city of Phoenix, Arizona, to take an example, traffic police built drive-through testing stations for exhaust emissions. Drivers enter the station, attendants connect their vehicles to analyzers which automatically test for exhaust pollutants and print out the results.

The whole process takes about five minutes. A single four-bay station can handle at least 150,000 cars per year. Twenty such stations, located strategically around Jakarta could test the Jakarta's million cars annually. No car would get a vehicle license without a certificate from the testing station.

The cost of the twenty stations would be a fraction of the cost to convert a single refinery to produce unleaded gasoline. And the analyzers can check diesel as well as gasoline engines. Two-stroke motorcycles are another story, but if the other vehicles stop polluting, the remaining problem would be small.

An addition benefit for Jakarta would be the huge increase in work for auto mechanics, keeping the cars tuned so they can pass the emissions test. Unemployment would be down and air quality would be up.

Only one thing could keep it from working: corrupt officials who can be bribed to issue licenses without the test certificate. Come to think of it, maybe it has no chance of working here.

Window: Simply changing to unleaded gasoline will do nothing for Jakarta's air quality unless all gasoline engines are fitted with expensive catalytic converters.