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Cities plump for Central scheme, take to CNG buses – Home – livemint.com

The opportunity to earn money by selling carbon credits, growing environmental awareness and the novelty value of buses fuelled by compressed natural gas (CNG) may have prompted some 14 cities to order hundreds of CNG vehicles, taking advantage of a one-time funding scheme offered by the Centre.

The opportunity to earn money by selling carbon credits, growing
environmental awareness and the novelty value of buses fuelled by
compressed natural gas (CNG) may have prompted some 14 cities to order
hundreds of CNG vehicles, taking advantage of a one-time funding scheme
offered by the Centre.

Green fleet: Low-floor CNG buses run by Delhi Transport Corporation. Ramesh Pathania / Mint

The cities that have placed orders for CNG buses include Visakhapatnam, Delhi, Indore, Ujjain, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Agartala, Tripura, Agra, Kanpur and Lucknow, according to urban development secretary

M. Ramachandran. Many of these cities are getting CNG vehicles for the first time, he added.

CNG is a substitute for petrol and diesel, and considered to be a more environmentally clean alternative to those fuels. Trading of carbon credits awarded for controlling emissions offers a potentially lucrative opportunity for cities that switch to CNG-fuelled public bus fleets.

“We have a carbon credit system that is under validation and if we go for CNG, it helps us in getting money,” said S.C. Garg, chief technical adviser for Indore’s city transport service. The municipality also reasoned that the prices of
diesel, which is the preferred fuel for most bus operators, are likely to increase at a faster rate than the price of CNG. “Also, we can tell people to come and sit in a CNG bus for the first time,” he added.