With No Rain This Time Around, R-Day Parade To Be More Polluted & Foggy
When Barack Obama was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade last year, the international media's gaze was fixed on the toxic air the US President would breathe while attending the function. The hype is missing this time around but Delhi's air is far worse.As he watches the parade at Rajpath on Tuesday , French President Francois Hollande will be exposed to air pollution levels likely to be twice as bad as the same day last year.
The air quality index of the city on Monday was 338, firmly in the Very Poor category , according to data provided by the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR). According to SAFAR's forecast, the AQI is likely to remain in the Very Poor zone at 345.
Despite the international attention it got because of Obama's presence, the air quality during last year's parade was far better at 154, termed as Moderate. The reason was purely related to the weather.
Last year, the capital got rain on January 22 and 23, and again in the morning of the parade. The showers cleansed the air, leading to a fall in pollution levels. This fact was largely ignored by the international press, with one agency report saying Air Force One had “descended through an acrid smog“ when it landed in New Delhi on January 25.
But conditions are likely to be different for Hollande. With no rain within miles of the capital, the parade is likely to be held in foggy and heavily polluted air.
Even on Monday , when PM Modi and Hollande were engaged in a number of events in and round the capital, including the launch of the interim secretariat of the international solar alliance in neighboring Gurgaon, the air quality in Delhi was “extreme“ or “hazardous“ category .
Particulate matter pollution dominated in Delhi with AQI about eight times higher than in Paris around 4.30pm (IST). According to Paris based start-up Plume Labs, in Paris nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels were marginally higher than Delhi at certain hours.
While in Paris the air pollution is mainly from vehicles, particularly diesel run vehicles as over 70% of their elec tricity is from nuclear energy sources, in Delhi it's a range o sources including vehicles trash burning, thermal plants brick kilns and many others as recent reports like the one by IIT Kanpur have pointed out.
But there is a stark diffe rence in the intensity with which the two cities react to dirty air. Paris too often brea ches the air pollution limits se by the European Union. Accor ding to a recent Airparif re port on air quality , Paris at ti mes reaches almost twice the regulatory limit set by the Eu ropean Commission directive.
According to scientists from the French Nationa Centre for Scientific Research, t's a very poor air quality day n Paris when concentrations of particulate matter (PM) go up to 100 micrograms per cubic metres, which is the safe standard or prescribed limit for PM 10 (coarse pollution particles) in India.
Paris also has a number of measures to counter the pollu ion from transport. One of the most important measures is hat the government has decided to phase out diesel vehicles n the city altogether by 2020.Even the existing fleet of diesel vehicles will have to be junked in the next four years.
Paris has also tried enfor cing the odd-even strategy on high pollution days that Delhi enforced between January 1 and 15. After 1997, the city enforced the odd-even strategy again in March 2014 with moderate results. Paris has massively increased the share of electric and hybrid vehicles and promoted cycling through bike sharing projects like Velib. It prohibits heavy vehicles, inter-city buses or coaches from plying through the city .
“Paris implemented oddeven in March 2014 and repeated it in March 2015, saw 18% reduction in traffic and 6% drop in pollution levels,“ according to the Centre for Science and Environment.
Sunrise on fuel of the future?
A hydrogen-based economy may be some way off, but many experts feel it's the fuel of the future.
In light of the national debate on vehicular pollution, hydrogen -a `clean' fuel, an ideal substitute for fossil fuels -might be the solution to urban India's pollution woes.
Last year, India's first solar-powered hydrogen fuel station opened on the NISE premises in Gwalpahari, which the PM and the French President visited on Monday.
In India, hydrogen is produced using a solarpowered electrolyser, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and purifies the former. “When you produce hydrogen from a renewable source, the fuel itself becomes a renewable source of energy,“ explained Niranjan Raje, former director, R&D, Indian Oil, and principal investigator in the project from its inception to its 2015 launch. Sharad Kohli
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