Four months after the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) launched a pilot project with 10 buses operating on bio-diesel, it is prepared to upgrade the project to 15 depots in the coming month and is looking to procure bio-diesel on a large scale in April.
In the earlier pilot, 107 buses switched over to a 20 per cent blend of biodiesel (B20), which was found to have had a significant effect on emissions. “The use of bio-diesel reduced pollution by as much as 50 per cent. There are several benefits of bio-diesel and this led us to change over to the environment-friendly fuel,” says KSRTC Managing Director Rajender Kumar Kataria.
The corporation also announced the launch of a pilot project of running a 100 per cent bio-diesel bus, which was retrofitted by Scania and provided to KSRTC for a trial run. This will be the first time such a trial is being run in the country by a State-owned transport corporation. Initially, the bus will be operated within the State. “Once documentation is complete and the performance has been analysed, we will look at out-of-State routes,” Mr. Kataria said.
Working in tandem with KSRTC is the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), which plans to run 150 buses on B20 bio-diesel. “The initial results with a few buses have been encouraging. We want to expand this project, but it will remain a pilot, as we need to examine the quality and performance of bio-diesel,” said Ekroop Caur, Managing Director, BMTC.
Joint tenders have been issued for sourcing bio-diesel, which is cheaper than diesel. The corporations are in talks with suppliers for entering into long-term contracts with buy-back agreements to encourage the production of bio-diesel.
