Being the largest transportation consumer and bus producer in the world comes with a heavy price tag. And China has been paying for it for the past decade.
Come 2009 and Chinese roads would endorse clean Fuel Cell Buses (FCB), one of the small steps towards helping China come out of the urban mess that it has become.
The fuel cell bus commercialization project between United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), with a support of US$5.6 million from the Global Environment Facility, will ensure that dependence on fossil fuels is brought down and green house gases reduced with commercialization of FCB and introduction of hydrogen refilling stations throughout urban areas of China.
China has a big market for mass commercialization of clean fuel vehicles. Buses comprise 75% of urban public transport, changing them into hybrid clean energy FCBs is a task worth applause. For this three FCBs were provided by UNDP in June 2006 for a test drive in Beijing(which was ranked as the second most polluted mega-city in the world by WHO in 1992). The buses now ply successfully on weekdays, now its time for Shanghai(which rests at 19th on pollution scale). The Chinese government had recently launched its 11th Five-Year Plan for Social and Economic Development, under which alternative fuels were seen as areas of potential growth.
The project to commercialize fuel cells will also see research and knowledge base being set up to analyze technical issues and also further the plan to commercialize FCB in China as a whole.
Air pollution is a major problem in most of China’s major cities mainly because of the vehicle exhaust emissions. The transportation sector is one of the main sources of air pollution in Chinese cities, and the effect is that over 270 million urban Chinese are breathing an air that is below acceptable standards.
If FCBs become successful, it is estimated that in term of Green House Gases reduction China will end up saving 9.1 million tones per year.
Via: Chinacsr
