Govt and construction equipment makers to discuss eco norms

The Union government plans to hold discussions with CE manufacturers on development of clean fuel variants. The move comes in the wake of EPCA advocating clean fuel in the CE sector with an upgrade from BS-III to BS-IV fuel emission norms with effect from April. Currently, the sector has been asked to adhere to BS-IV fuel emission norms from October 2020. As of now, nearly 99 percent of the construction equipment in India is driven by diesel as it provides higher power and torque. Several players have said that conversion to a cleaner fuel like CNG may result in loss of 16-20 percent power. Globally too, companies prefer diesel. Dual fuel is an option which can work well with some caps in terms of load factor. For example, the equipment may run on a cleaner fuel like CNG when it is handling 50-60 percent of load and switch to diesel if the load is more. However, without a set limit, this will be an eye-wash as people would prefer diesel only. Currently, availability of fuel and preparedness of the market are bottlenecks in the use of such variants. The meeting between the road, transport and highways ministry and manufacturers of earthmoving vehicles, hydraulic excavators, cranes and dozers is expected to lay the roadmap for reducing pollution from this segment of vehicles.