Context: The Delhi Electric Vehicles Policy was notified on August 7.

 

Primary objective of the policy:

• The policy aims to make Delhi the Electric Vehicle (EV) capital of India.
• It has set an ambitious target of ensuring that by 2024, EVs account for 25% of all new vehicle registrations in the national capital to bring about a “material improvement” in Delhi’s air quality by reducing emissions from the transport sector.

 

Share of vehicular emissions in Delhi’s pollution:

• According to an IIT-Kanpur study, vehicles are the second largest and the “most consistent” – around 20-25% – contributing source of pollutants PM10 and PM2.5.
• The Supreme Court-monitored Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority had also pointed out that industrial and vehicular pollution account for the greatest share of Nitrate particles formed from nitrogen oxides and sulphate particles formed from sulphur dioxides in the city.

 

Features of the policy:

 

• The policy is incentive-driven, which the government believes will encourage people to buy new EVs, scrap cars running on petrol and diesel.
• It has provisions for low-interest loans for battery-run commercial vehicles like buses and trucks.
• The policy lays a particular emphasis in the category of two-wheelers, autos, and goods carriers and will, for the first time, allow ride-hailing services such as Ola and Uber and last mile delivery platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy to operate battery-driven bikes.
• All two-wheelers engaged in last-mile deliveries (e.g., food delivery, e-commerce logistics etc.) will be expected to transition 50% of their fleet to electric by March 2023, and 100% of their fleet by March 2025.
• Currently, two-thirds of new vehicle registrations in Delhi comprise two-wheelers.
• From 2020, the government has also committed to ensure that 50 percent of its new public bus purchases are pure electric buses.

 

Charging infrastructure to support this major transition:

 

• The policy recommends changes in building bye-laws so that all new homes and workplaces are ‘EV ready’ with 20% of all vehicles holding capacity/parking equipped with charging points.
• The purchase of charging points will also be incentivised to the tune of Rs 6,000 per charging point for the first 30,000 such points.
• The existing building owners and Residents Welfare Associations will be “encouraged” to follow suit through similar incentives as well.
• The policy lists as its key objective the creation of public charging facilities within three km travel from anywhere in Delhi by inviting companies to set up charging and battery swapping stations at “bare minimum lease rentals” and full reimbursement for purchases of swappable batteries by them.

 

Recycling of batteries:

 

• The policy acknowledges that lack of adequate reuse or recycling of batteries shall have a “high environmental cost”.
• The policy does not have details on ways and means to recycle batteries.
• It merely states the policy shall encourage the reuse of EV batteries that have reached the end of their life.

 

(This policy is specific to a state. However, some good points can be quoted as suggestions/case studies)

 

Reference:

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/how-delhi-hopes-to-become-indias-electric-vehicle-capital-6552623/