Every year as Diwali approaches, debate over the air quality of Indian cities gets heated up. More so, for Delhi which gets doubly affected due to the stubble-burning period in North India. While many healthy discussions on unhealthy air gets heated up, the primary reasons for this and cascading effects of it are churned out as less actionable areas. Look at Delhi city, when the Odd- Even formula for vehicular plying was adopted to handle the worsening air quality, media and what’s app was flooded with satire on such initiative. If we do not take this issue seriously now, in near future more and more cities need to become extremely creative and come out with the out of box thinking to combat this globally concerning issue. In addition, such initiatives may not be convenient to everyone to adopt.

We all have witnessed the extreme weather events happening globally in recent past like floods in Europe in July 2021 where several countries were affected with catastrophic effects with wide spread damage and loss of life. Another disturbing example from Europe, which witnessed excessive heat wave in June 2019, affecting six major nations killing over 550 people. In India, too we have witnessed prolonged rainy season and at some part of India is still getting heavy rains, which is untimely.

Of course, these are not normal events and are results of “something gone wrong” on larger perspective of Global climate change which includes global warming caused by human actions and its cascading impact on the weather patterns.

The major reason for this is the incessant emissions of greenhouse gases mainly carbon dioxide and methane. The extraction and burning of fossils fuels for various energy creation purposes emits most of these gases. As scientists have proved, many air pollutants contribute to climate change by affecting the amount of incoming sunlight that is reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere, with some pollutants warming and others cooling the earth. These air pollutants include methane, black carbon, ground-level ozone, and sulfate aerosols. They have significant impacts on the climate: black carbon and methane in particular are among the top contributors to global warming after CO2.

Industrial emissions and loss of green covers add to these woes further. The World Health Organization call climate change as the greatest threat for global health in the 21st century. At the first WHO Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health in 2018 WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called air pollution a “silent public health emergency”. Approximately 7 million premature deaths annually happen due to the effects of air pollution and about 4 million of which are due to ambient (outdoor) air pollution.

Goals and direction

While from 1988 onwards, globally the clamor about climate change and global warming was getting louder and loader, India was facing one of the worst crises on economic and political fronts at home at the same time. The precarious developments on Balance of Payment crisis and instability at central government, was not allowing us to join hands strongly with other nations to tackle the risk posed to our planet.

India’s attempts to face the climate change saw the introduction of the vehicular emission norms for petrol and diesel vehicles in 1991. However, our initial steps were inadequate as, in the global list of countries most affected due to climate change, India was ranked fourth in the world in the period from 1996 to 2015.

Since 2000, Euro emission norm are followed in India under the name of Bharat Stage Emission standards for four wheeled vehicles. Bharat Stage III, norms were enforced across all India since October 2010. For four wheeled vehicles, BS-IV emission norms were put in place in 13 major cities from April 2010, and the entire country from April 2017. In 2016, the government announced that the country would skip the BS-V norms altogether and adopt BS-VI norms by 2020.

BS IV for equipment industry

In March 2018, final rules for non-road Bharat Stage (CEV/Trem) IV and V emission standards were released by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in India. This included stringent emission limits on particulate matter (PM), particulate number (PN) (BS V only), nitrogen oxide (NOX), hydrocarbon (HC), and carbon monoxide (CO). Even though India was striving hard and marching forward in contributing the lesser emission on four wheeled vehicles, it was first time India had adopted a single set of consistent standards to regulate the agricultural and construction equipment. Since 2000, India was already aligning its emissions standards with European standards. The standards for agricultural and construction equipment (BS (CEV/Trem) IV and V) were in general alignment with EU Stage IV and V standards for diesel engines used in off road mobile equipment.

Proudly, this step had made India the first nation outside European Union to adopt stage V equivalent emission standards, moving it ahead of many developed countries like the USA, Japan, and China in controlling the emissions for off road equipment.

The implementation of BS (CEV/Trem) IV standards for diesel engine equipment, including agricultural tractors, construction equipment vehicles, and combine harvesters, it covered the diesel engines between 37 and 560Kw, starting from October1, 2020. Later, the BS (CEV/Trem) V standards, starting from April 1, 2024, would cover a wider range of engines, including those smaller than 8 kW and those larger than 560 kW, and introduce PN limits for those engines with rated power between 19 and 560 kW.

Under the announced timeline and standards applicable, India will achieve significant reductions of NOX and PM from agricultural tractors and construction equipment, as shown in the tables below -

 

Challenges posed to equipment industry

While India’s ambitious plan to work in tandem on emission norms equivalent to Europe would not come without any cost. These norms required to meet stringent PM and PN limits which would require fine particulate filters, key technology needed for effective control of PM emissions, adequate quality fuel etc. In addition, engines, which are, equipped with selective catalytic reduction also needed to meet the ammonia emissions limits of 25 ppm for engines less than 56 Kw and 10 ppm for engine above 56 Kw.

To meet these norms as per set deadline of launch in October 2020, the entire Construction and Agricultural equipment industry was working hard in developing the technology, making design changes, identifying and developing vendors, and improving the supply chain. However, Covid-19 had put the brakes and major limitations on the efforts of all key players in both the industries.

On the request of key players in these industries and ICEMA, the government invited suggestions from the stakeholders to decide on the deferment of implementation of BS TREM-IV emission norms for construction equipment vehicles in view of Covid-19. While the new emission norms were to be implemented from October 1, 2020, the date of implementation was extended to April 2021 and October 2021 for CEVs and tractors respectively.

It was quite evident that the developmental cost for compliance to the new emission norms was quite high and from product to product, this ranged between 5 to 9 per cent. Apart from this cost, the entire industry witnessed a steep rise in the material costs post covid recovery phase. Most of the organisations would also require investing in skill upgradation programs so that they can continue to support their customers without any problems. The construction equipment and agricultural equipment industry, which has an intense competitive dynamic and are working under pressure on margins, such high-cost increases was not auguring well.

Briefly, construction and agriculture equipment manufacturers faced following key challenges during the implementation stage of BS IV in general.

Key issues faced by equipment industry:

Development of equipment technology

Power train development as per emission norms

Global shortages of semi-conductors affected the development of technology involving electronic components.

Quality vendor development

Reliable supply chain

Cost escalations due to general price increase in raw material.

Multifold Increase in the shipment costs globally due to shortages of containers more importantly from China.

Development of training modules to ensure the smooth servicing and keeping high uptime of the equipment.

Finally, uncertainty over Covid-19

Equipment buyer/user take away

While the cost of technology development flattens over the scale of supplies, the initial equipment price escalations of 5-9 per cent was certainly affecting the buyer economics if one has to see only initial buying price. This was more relevant for the rental segment customers who typically work on short life cycle span as many infrastructure projects going for rental equipment, would prefer to have new equipment to ensure the high uptime.

However, if one sees the cost benefit analysis, prima facie, though the new technology would have impact on initial purchase pricing, it would offer many benefits like improved fuel economy, greener technology with low operating noise, improving operating costs and reducing the operator fatigue ensuring better efficiency. Fuel being the single most important operating cost of construction and agricultural equipment, saving potential on this parameter should actually make equipment users happy. The new technology could also provide the Human Machine Interface, HMI for better management of the equipment for monitoring the efficiency, productivity and overall performance. It also promises to have lower maintenance costs over longer operating cycles. All these costs together would actually reduce the overall owning and operating costs.

One may summarise the benefits of BS -IV emission norms as below-

Development of state of art technology competing with global products

Cleaner, leaner and quieter engines doing good for the environment as lesser carbon footprint is left behind

Better fuel efficiency offering reduced operational costs. Fuel is the single biggest cost component in operation of the equipment.

Lower maintenance costs over long period of time

Introduction of Artificial intelligence through HMI, would offer better control over the information generated through the equipment performance parameter monitoring. Such accurate information would be powerful tool in decision-making.

Summary and recommendations

The implementation of BS-IV emission standards for construction and agriculture equipment industry, which has grown average 15-20% YOY for last over a decade, would mean a coverage of larger section of equipment under greener technologies contributing lesser Carbon footprint. As already explained, the benefits of such implementation for this key industry outweigh the costs involved in adopting these standards.

While customer profiles vary across the geography and from experienced buyer to a novice buyer, the equipment manufacturers would require bringing out the out of box ideas to woo all these customers. Finance tie ups, demos, buy back of equipment, leasing of the equipment, Extended warranties, maintenance contracts, Operations and Maintenance helplines, Customer trainings etc could be few ideas to make the equipment owning and operating experience more richer for their customers.

As with BSIV emission norm implementation, which is at par with emission norms used in many developed nations, Indian made equipment would become more acceptable in global markets and this would open up the scale economies for many manufacturers. While maintaining an Eagle’s eye on global opportunities, the “Make in India” determination would help many organizations to scale a new height in the global market.

Finally, on concluding remarks, I think India’s determination to contribute sustainably in making world greener by working with cleaner and leaner technologies would help in finding our product accepted more and more globally.

Are we ready for that flight?

(The Author is Senior Business Management professional worked in Construction, Mining, Material Handling and Port equipment industry in India and in the Middle East)