At least, this is what Indian government
data on diesel consumption would suggest. Official statistics report low
consumption and stagnating growth of diesel fuel in transport. However, this
data contrasts starkly with experts’ findings that both diesel consumption and
CO2 emissions from transport are on the rise. The reality is that the Indian
transport sector’s thirst for diesel is actually increasing at
an alarming pace.
Official Statistics from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas
India's transport sector is
powered by diesel and it accounts for 60-70%
of transport fuel consumption. The
2011
Energy statistics from Indian government reported transport sector diesel
consumption around 33 million tons. The
main point of interest is year 1995-1996
where we see a drop of 28%. It took nearly 13 years to recover this drop as the
diesel consumption growth increased marginally. The IEA in its 2004 energy
outlook projections reflected this impact and scaled down the earlier projections of
oil consumption (WEO 2000) i.e. 2020 projections were reduced by half. The
impact of this is also reflected in India's national communication estimates.
The most recent official estimate of transport CO2 emissions is the 2007
greenhouse gas inventory. It has been estimated that the road transport sector
emitted, 121.21 million tons of CO2 in 2007. The same central agency in
2000 had quantified CO2 emissions from road transport sector is 105 million
tons with 48 million vehicles .
Researchers who
have analyzed this drop have come to varied conclusions. Timilsina
reported that
the change in diesel consumption maybe a statistical adjustment in the
reporting of diesel consumption and further suggests that "It
is thus likely that both CO2 emission
growth and transportation energy intensity for India ought to be revised
downwards from 1980 to 1995 to reflect this adjustment". While, Zhou
et al.
built several scenarios to discover the drop in emission growth. Among the
scenarios, more interesting were possible 18% increase in fuel consumption due
to fuel adulteration and backcalculation of truck activity to reflect such drop
in consumption i.e. annual truck activity of 12000 to 36000km/year. The main conclusion was that such drop is
unrealistic.
The cause for
worry is further intensified with the release of latest statistics from energy
agencies. Recent statistic reports (statistics
- 2012 and 2013
) has completely revised the diesel consumption values and suggested a major reallocation
of transport diesel consumption values to more mysterious "miscellaneous
services". The drop is 5 to 6 times. The 2011 diesel consumption value has
been readjusted around 5 million tons from earlier 33 million tons. The
miscellaneous category shows an increase of 10 times but no definition exists
on what actually this means. To draw parallel, in terms of CO2 emissions from
diesel consumption, it is a drop from
around 100 million tons to around 15 million tons. Since, Indian transport
industry is mainly powered by diesel, this would mean drastic reduction in
India's transport carbon emissions (around 85 million tons). This decrease is equivalent to annual
transport carbon emission of Indonesia which has a vehicle fleet of more
than 50 million vehicles. This proves that numbers shown by the government does
not tell the whole story. This so-called reduction is not a cause for cheer but
for worry.
Rapid dieselization of fleet
Bottom
up data reveal a completely different story. Over the same period, number of
diesel vehicles increased two to three
fold in terms of vehicle registrations. Analysis of data from Society of
Indian Automobile Manufacturers reveal
an annual growth of 14% in sales of trucks and buses from 1990 to 2011.
The
freight activity (tonkm) increased by
more than 2 times. This means that growing numbers of trucks are traversing
length and breadth of the country transporting goods. Over the same time
period, economy data reveals growing income and no sustained impact of
recession. GDP per Capita increased by
more than 5% annually.
Big
gap in gasoline and diesel prices ( diesel per liter costs 20 rupees less) have
made use of diesel in passenger car segment attractive. CSE
suggests that In 2011-12, diesel cars accounted for over 40 per cent of the
total car sales in the country. Industry experts believe that by 2015, diesel
cars sales would be around 43%.
Crunching Numbers
Analysis of this
transport growth by Lee Schipper's ASIF
framework by different researchers and institutions show enormous
discrepancy in government statistics. While researchers do not agree with each
other on what exactly is the actual diesel consumption value, what is
significant to note (figure) is that even under the worst possible scenario, India transport sector's thirst
for diesel is not slowing down but increasing at a very rapid pace. There is a
significant gap in-between what government statistics suggest and what
researchers and experts predict. The
difference can be as high as five to eight times the official reported values.
Not knowing the magnitude of
actual consumption or wrongly assuming low consumption would make it much more
difficult for policy makers to find solutions to decrease dependency on fossil
fuel. There is a significant gap in-between what government statistics suggest
and what researchers and experts predict.
Not knowing the magnitude of actual consumption would make it much more
difficult for policy makers to find solutions to decrease dependency on fossil
fuel.
A shorter form of this blogpost is published originally in thecityfix.com (http://thecityfix.com/blog/debunking-india-diesel-consumption-mystery-co2-emissions-sudhir-gota/)
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