India Press Releases

USTDA Provides Assistance for Diesel Retrofit Project to Check Pollution in Pune

September 1, 2006

MUMBAI - The United States government today awarded a grant of 296,000 dollars (Indian Rupees 1.37 crore) to the Pune Municipal Corporation for a project to improve local air quality management practices and reduce emissions.

The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) grant will fund technical assistance for the Diesel Retrofit Project in Pune, which will retrofit a set of local diesel buses with cleaner fuel and innovative emissions control technology. Mr. Shivajirao Rane, Manager (Traffic and Administration), Pune Municipal Transport, and Mr. Carl B. Kress, The United States Trade and Development Agency's Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, signed the agreement in Mumbai. U.S. Consul General Mr. Michael Owen witnessed the signing.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr. Kress said, "This grant represents the commitment of the United States Government to work with India to introduce new technologies that will result in cleaner fuel and reduced emissions."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been working in India with the Pune Municipal Corporation, the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, and other local stakeholders for several years to promote improved urban air quality management.

The long-term objective of the diesel retrofit project is to develop and transfer experience, tools, technologies and approaches for characterizing and controlling emissions from heavy-duty diesel vehicles in Pune, which may then be replicated in other Indian cities.

The technical assistance is in direct support of the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, which was one of the U.S. Government's key initiatives launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2002.  It also supports the six-nation Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), of which the United States is a partner.