The Delhi-Meerut Expressway Is Making Green Way
According to an article published in The Times Of India, the newly constructed Eastern Peripheral Highway has put on prevention over the entry of a larger number of trucks in Delhi which tends to add to pollution in a major way. This can help in avoiding more than fifteen lakh tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the next twenty years. According to a study made by The Energy and Resources Institute and the Central Road Research Institute, the Delhi-Meerut expressway is capable of preventing more than two lakh tons of carbon dioxide emission.
The report has further estimated that the forthcoming Delhi-Dehradun Expressway has the potential to prevent more than twenty and a half lakh tons of carbon dioxide emission. If you wonder about the Delhi-Agra highway then the study says that it has the capacity for avoiding over six lakh tons of carbon dioxide too.
It is also being said that at the national level, the development of greenfield expressways and national highways over the past nine years can avoid the emission of carbon dioxide of more than thirty-two million tons every year. And if you look at a frame of twenty years it will successfully avoid sixty hundred and forty-three million tons by then. This assessment has been conducted with the help of the project’s life cycle analysis. Both the period of construction along with the phase of operation of the expressways and national highways have been taken into account. Furthermore, the trees outside forests and the loss of forest area have been included too in this calculation.
The amount of carbon dioxide emission which can be estimated to be avoided has been achieved after the consideration of multiple factors which includes the improved national highways. The circuitous and congested routes can be avoided leading to a much-reduced consumption of fuel. This is going to impact in a positive way to the compensatory afforestation and the impact of avenue plantations.
In the report, there is also a mention that the construction and expansion of the expressway and the national highways have a big impact on the consumption of fuels because have less stoppage time in traffic congestion saving both petrol and diesel.
Due to EPE, it is estimated that in twenty years diesel can be saved by five hundred and seventy-five million tons whereas petrol can be saved by four million tons. Now a huge number of trucks too can be diverted which generally had to pass through Delhi previously adding to lesser pollution in the city.
Although the report shows that lesser diesel could be saved in terms of petrol but it is because at this stretch there are more private vehicles. There are about fifteen brown-field and five green-field stretches here leading to higher use of petrol-driven vehicles.
The report even states that among these twenty projects, the total estimation of the consumption of fuel shall be around more than forty-one billion liters in the next twenty year’s span. This would surely end up saving a lot of fuel for medium, heavy, and commercial vehicles as well.
