Some good news concerned with the air conditions of the country have surfaced yesterday. As we all know the vital need for cleaner air and diminishing air pollution especially in metro and tier 1 cities, India will switch to the world’s cleanest petrol and diesel from April 1.
Euro-VI Fuel
In case you’re wondering about this leapfrog to this transition all of a sudden, you need to first know about the Euro-VI grade fuel.
Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the firm that controls roughly half of the country’s fuel market commented that almost all refineries began producing ultra-low sulphur BS-VI (equivalent to Euro-VI grade) petrol and diesel by the end of 2019 and oil companies have now undertaken the tedious task of replacing every drop of fuel in the country with the new one.
This leads to our today’s topic, which says that India will soon join the select league of nations using petrol and diesel containing just 10 parts per million of sulphur, by cutting vehicular emissions which are known to be among one of the major reasons for air pollution.
The Transition to BS-VI Fuel
India will switch to the world’s cleanest petrol and diesel from April 1 and it jumps from Euro-IV grades now, straight to Euro-VI emission compliant fuels, in just three years.
Such a heavy transition in such a small time hasn’t been noted in any country around the globe as of now.
Sanjiv Singh, Chairman of IOC is confident of supplying BS-VI fuel from April 1. Almost all refineries have begun supplying BS-VI fuel and the same has reached storage depots across the country.
He has also informed that the fuel has started travelling to petrol pumps from storage stations and in the next few weeks all of them will only have BS-VI grade petrol and diesel.
India’s Journey to Euro-VI Fuel
India adopted Euro-III equivalent (or Bharat Stage-III) fuel with a sulphur content of 350 ppm back in 2010. It took India another 7 years to transit to BS-IV, which contained a sulphur content of 50 ppm.
The great news here is that to shift from BS-IV to BS-VI, it took us just 3 years. Singh also commented that first upgrading to BS-V and then shifting to BS-VI would have prolonged the journey to 4 to 6 years.
Besides, oil refineries as well as automobile manufacturers would have to invest twice, first to produce BS-V grade fuel and engines, and then BS-VI equivalents. BS-VI has a sulphur content of just 10 ppm and emission standards are as good as CNG.
State-owned oil refineries spent about Rs 35,000 crore to upgrade plants that could produce ultra-low sulphur fuel. This investment is on top of Rs 60,000 crore they spent on refinery upgrades in the previous switchovers.
Originally, Delhi and its adjoining towns were to have BS-VI fuel supplies by April 2019 and the rest of the country was to get same supplies from April 2020.
However, oil marketing companies switched over to supply of BS-VI grade fuels in Delhi on April 1, 2018. BS-VI fuels was further extended to four contiguous districts of Rajasthan and eight of Uttar Pradesh in NCR and Agra on April 1, 2019.
BS-VI grade fuels were made available in 7 districts of Haryana from October 1, 2019.
Singh said the new fuel will
result in a reduction in NOx in BS-VI compliant vehicles by 25% in petrol cars
and by 70% in diesel cars.
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