Daring Cities 2020: Kejriwal speaks on EV policy, odd-even scheme at global meet on climate change

Addressing an international summit on climate change, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal Wednesday expanded on his government’s recent electric vehicle (EV) policy, the new crop stubble decomposer and other measures taken to tackle air pollution in the national capital over the past few years.

Addressing an international summit on climate change, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal Wednesday expanded on his government’s recent electric vehicle (EV) policy, the new crop stubble decomposer and other measures taken to tackle air pollution in the national capital over the past few years.

Arvind Kejriwal was addressing the Daring Cities 2020 virtual conference on Wednesday. (File photo)

Addressing the ‘Daring Cities 2020’ virtual conference, Kejriwal also spoke about how his government had shut thermal power plants and introduced the odd-even road space rationing scheme in order to reduce pollution in Delhi during the winter months.

The conference is being hosted in Germany and is a forum for global leaders to interact on how they are tackling climate change, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kejriwal was invited to address the delegates, alongside urban leaders and decision-makers from Bogota (Colombia), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Los Angeles (USA), and Entebbe (Uganda), and also to discuss multilevel action needed to tackle climate emergency and ensure environment sustainability, the CM’s office said in a statement.

“During the past five years in Delhi, we have taken several measures to tackle the twin problems of climate change and air pollution. This has resulted in a reduction in pollution by 25% , in terms of average PM 2.5 levels. Some of the main initiatives that we took were the introduction of the odd-even scheme, the closure of thermal power plants, the ban on the use of polluting fuels, and the launch of a mega green drive,” Kejriwal said.

He further said, “Our aim is to make Delhi the EV capital of the world. The Delhi government has recently notified a very progressive EV policy that will enable large-scale transition to EV vehicles -- 25% of all new vehicles by 2024 will be EVs. With a mix of financial incentives, creation of citywide charging infrastructure, and extra fee/taxes on polluting vehicles, we are laying the ground for the wide adoption of EVs in Delhi. The policy has been widely appreciated and it is our dream to put Delhi among the top cities globally in terms of adoption of electric vehicles.”

“In an effort to devise sustainable solutions to crop stubble burning, we have joined hands with Indian Agricultural Research Institute to introduce the bio-decomposer technique. Every winter, in north India, millions of tonnes of crop stubble is burnt in fields at the end of the harvesting season. This is done since there is very little time left between the harvesting of one crop and the sowing of the next. And with a lack of other viable alternatives, farmers are compelled to burn the crop stubble to be immediately rid of it,” Kejriwal said.