COVID-19 Pandemic: An opportunity To Clean & Green India
Now that the manufacture of all types of motored vehicles have come to a standstill……if Maruti Suzuki is manufacturing ventilators to assist the GOI in its taming the COVID-19 virus, I am sure if given the right conditions & resources, SUZUKI could also manufacture emission equipment kits which would make all vehicles made & sold in India USA’s EPA emissions standards compliant. Maruti Suzuki has almost 55% share of these automobiles in the Indian market. These kits would be fitted on vehicles currently being driven on the Indian roads and thereafter they could re engineer the equipment as per The California Air Resources Board (CARB) standards where the entire vehicle’s equipment is compliant without any intermediary kits required in between. CARB is the standard that rules all vehicular activity and is the engineered automobile offering made to the USA automobiles market. So all vehicular engineering capacities in India can be upgraded & re tooled to CARB standards while production & demand wait for COVID-19 to let the manufacturers to restart production. This can also be applied to the two & three wheeler vehicles along with the mid to heavy duty vehicles.
At the same time, electric & hybrid vehicles should be given impetus and encouragement along with building the energy infrastructure that is required by these types of vehicles.
The crude petroleum refineries which are running at very low capacities should also be re calibrated to produce the required quality levels of diesel, petrol & kerosene fuels to run these up to date CARB standards vehicles. This raising the bar would create some employment in the now god forsaken petroleum industry.
Furthermore, it is suggested that the fuels be kept on the ground floor of a petrol station while E chargers for batteries of E vehicles or hybrids could be positioned on the first floor upwards depending on the demographics of any particular fuels/energy station’s location. As crude petroleum capacities are used up these stations could seamlessly cater to the E vehicle battery operated vehicles. As both types of energy will be serviced at these dual energy stations they would be future ready when the fuels run out or are phased out.
Our trains and heavy duty trucks should run on foolproof fusion/ nuclear powered generated energy solutions….a huge area of research and employment.
Diesel & Gas gensets should be phased out totally unless their emission standards are improved to comparable CARB equivalent standards for automobiles, if any.
Boilers & arc furnaces should be green electricity driven.
Due to the lockdown Government & Private Coal mines should be closed & bought back by the government and the land areas so released should be used for solar plants with the miners that would be displaced be given jobs in these solar farms. If all the miners and ancillary industries are not absorbed in such solar employment they should be skilled in the manufacture & deployment of solar energy solutions like solar cookers, solar water heaters & solar electrical gadgets including solar computers. Even solar crematoriums should be developed. For the elderly miners, they should be put on welfare and they should receive welfare in digital monies and kind, till they, their spouse’s & dependents live.
Care should be taken that the coal powered thermal plants seamlessly are phased out for nuclear powered, solar powered, wind powered & hydro electricity powered electricity generation plants.
Electricity driven chulas should be preferred but could be supported by piped gas stoves and supported by cylinder gas especially at the village level.
So the GOI would have spent huge amounts of digital monies to finance the vehicles up their emissions standards, and buyout, or close their coal mines. So many people would have to be re deployed and skilled and new solar, nuclear, wind & hydro-electric capacities would have to be built. The monies would be spent for the immediate assets of the clean & green energy plants and solar gadgets-THE CAPEX ASSETS: but they would also generate another kind of ASSET: that of a CLEAN & GREEN ENVIRONMENT with PRODUCTIVE HEALTHY CITIZENS, both of which one could put a number to, as ASSETS on the GOI’s balance sheet so as to balance out the initial huge outlays of digital money LIABILITIES. This, if one accepts, to account for (This practice must be introduced into government accounting by the CAG) in the books on the assets side an amount of accrued digital monies value to assets like a clean & green environment & productive, healthy citizens. Note, similarly there are many other areas that need cleaning & greening but those who pollute should be assisted to convert to CLEAN & GREEN.
This is the opportunity that COVID-19 has provided us and it is up to the GOI to enforce……. A CLEAN & GREEN INDIA IN THE MAKING……LETS START IMMEDIATELY AS EVERYDAY IS PRECIOUS!
