Plugging pollution

to reduce pollution, the Global Environment Facility (gef) will provide 46 fuel cell powered buses, and us $60 million to the six smoggiest cities in the world. The cities include Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai, and Beijing. The buses would not only help in meeting the urban transportation demand but also clean the air.

A fuel cell powers vehicles by using electricity, which it creates by combining hydrogen with oxygen. Because the only emission from fuel-cell vehicles fueled with hydrogen is water vapour, they are significantly cleaner than existing diesel and petrol vehicles. Talking about the gef plan, Richard Hosier, the United Nations Development Programme (undp)-gef principal technical adviser for climate change, said "By focusing on these six cities in different regions, we hope to maximize exposure to the technology and accelerate both the transfer and commercialization of this technology in developing countries." undp studies indicate that if all diesel buses in developing countries were replaced by 2020 with fuel-cell buses, 40 per cent of dangerous airborne particulate matter would be eliminated.