New Delhi: With natural gas prices surging globally and supply chain concerns plaguing the EV rollout pace, Auto LPG can play a role in India's transition to a low carbon economy and fit in the fuel mix, industry body IAC said on Wednesday. With India poised to become a USD five trillion economy in the coming years, energy or fuel security has assumed greater importance.
Auto LPG is the third most widely used transport fuel in the world after petrol and diesel. It has zero global warming potential, while over 60 percent of electricity in India still comes from coal.
In a statement, IAC said that the government has taken a number of measures, including diversifying the energy basket and promoting alternatives, but the focus is more on pushing an EV-driven mobility system to move away from carbon-based petrol and diesel and achieving a cleaner environment.
"But, now that a full-fledged war has been underway involving a key global energy producer and exporter on top of already prevailing pandemic-induced global energy supply disruptions, energy security has become an even more dire and pressing issue," it added.
"In this backdrop, should the government not consider other alternative fuel options for mobility, such as auto LPG, in tandem with its pronounced focus on EVs?" it asked.
Pursuit of an auto LPG-based mobility system simultaneously with the EV push would help in achieving clean mobility as well as the larger energy security objective, said IAC.
"Not acknowledging other alternative fuel options such as Auto LPG, which could have possibly furthered the cause of clean mobility even more effectively, is concerning," said Suyash Gupta, Director General, Indian Auto LPG Coalition (IAC).
He said that well-to-wheel emissions from LPG are far less than those from electricity.
"To expect EV vehicles to create that clean mobility impact in the immediate term is not the case. In fact, with the larger global energy landscape having been redrawn in the last decade on account of the US transitioning from one of the largest energy importers to a net energy exporter, the supply-related concerns on LPG have vanished," he said.
He said that the landmark Ujjwala scheme aimed at providing cooking gas LPG to poor households in the remotest corners of the country has been a huge success.
"In order to implement this programme, several import terminals have been set up on both the eastern and the western coast of the country and thousands of kilometres of pipelines had anyways been laid in order to facilitate country-wide distribution of LPG," he added.
"Now that Ujjwala has achieved nearly 100 percent coverage, this new infrastructure could be put to good use for auto LPG distribution and sale network," he added.
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