INDIA ABOUT TO SKIP THE STEPWISE UP GRADATION OF “BS EMISSION NORMS”

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Indian Government due to the increasing amount of pollution in the country instituted emission standards in 2000 known as “Bharat stage emission standards”. Progressively stringent norms have been rolled out since then. After the implementation of these norms every vehicle in the county manufactured has to be compliant with the regulations including motor vehicles.

Time & again, these emission standards upgraded. Bharat Stage (BS-III) norms were enforced across the country, in October’2010 & since then it is followed across the country. Under these norms, each stage specifies a certain limit on the pollutants released, which is controlled by the type of fuel made by the oil companies and the up gradations and modifications made by the auto firms to their vehicles to control the pollutants released from the vehicle.

All of the northern India has been using BS-IV relevant diesel & petrol from quiet long now. But in southern India, BS-IV fuel availability was made sure in 2016, which leads to supply of BS-IV fuel in Goa, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha, Union Territories of Daman and Diu, Dadra-Nagar-Haveli and Andaman & Nicobar. Now, the government is focused to supply the BS-IV fuel to the rest of the country by 1 April’2017. With this country wide implementation of BS-IV, allowance on registration of BS-III applicable vehicles in the country is on hook & yet not decided.

With always increasing amount of air pollution in the country has now decided not to follow the stepwise up gradation norm strategy i.e. From BS-II to BS-III & then to BS-IV as now the Oil Ministry, is looking forward to considering the proposal of switching BS-IV to BS-VI auto fuels directly, thereby skipping BS-V by 1 April’2020.

Although initial plan included up gradation of the norms to BS-V by 1 April’2020, as skipping an entire stage of emission norms will put a lot of pressure on the auto firms and even the oil companies, which have supported skipping of BS-V stage.

As under BS-V emission norms, vehicles have to be fitted with a diesel particulate filter, which needs to be optimized according to Indian road conditions, whereas under stage VI, selective catalytic reduction technology has to be optimized, where at each stage, the technology would be validated over 6lakh to 7lakh km. Given the complexity of the process, direct up gradation from BS-IV to BS-VI is going to be quite difficult, though Indian oil companies had told the government that they would be in a position to make BS-VI fuel ready by 2020 .

According to a PTI report, oil refineries will need huge amount of investment for up gradation of these norms, as over Rs 80,000crore was needed to upgrade BS-IV TO BS-V, and for direct up gradation to BS-VI, oil refineries might need more.