If shared among the 32 passengers in a high occupancy bus, each passenger contributes 1906 grams of carbons just by purchasing a hundred cedi ticket to travel.
Each passenger using the smaller occupancy vehicles that sprint with 16 passengers per trip is contributing a whopping 3,812 grams of carbons to global warming just by travelling.
An engineer with government owned intercity Transport Company State Transport Company (STC) Philip Dogbey told Ultimate News, though such emissions are inevitable one of his mandates is to ensure that all STC busses run with fuel efficiency without excessive exhaust fumes.
“Major causes of busses that emit excessive smoke is worn out piston rings, faulty injectors and faulty inline injection pumps,” he illustrated pointing reporter Ivan Heathcote – Fumador to an Engine.
Here at its Oforikrom workshop, one of the duties of its youngest serving engineers Philip Dogbey is to ensure that emissions are kept at its lowest.
Contrary to thoughts that a vehicle that runs without billowing smoke from its exhaust pipes is free from emissions, Engineer Dogbey however explained that even the cleanest vehicles still emit just by operating on fossil fuels.
“We know that diesel and petrol all contain hydrocarbons and as long as you are on the field working, the end product which is exhaust gasses end up in the atmosphere which affects our ozone layer,” he explained from the company’s Oforikrom workshop.
Transport manager for the O.A. Travel and Tours Transport Company Kingsley Osei disclosed that, to manage emissions, the company’s quality assurance policy is to replace every faulty part that affects engine efficiency and fuel consumption and not to repair them.
The O.A. Travel and Tours workshop turns out one of the most resourced technical hubs which stocks all kinds of Engines from Europe, China and Japan mainly for maintenance with no procurement done outside the company’s own suppliers.
Air Conditioner GHG Emissions
Another culprit of high fuel consumption is the Air Conditioning units of these busses.
These engines rump up acceleration and exert extra power immediately the air conditioner motor is turned on.
Not only does this unit responsible for offering us a cool travel contribute to high fuel combustion; Air Conditioners also pose their own threats to the environment and global warming through the gasses they operate on.
These Mobile air conditioning systems in buses are still using tetrafluoroethane (R134a), a greenhouse gas is 1,430 times higher than that of carbon dioxide emissions.
Per the design of the high occupancy busses and the modern minibuses, air-conditioning has become both inevitable and a selling point to attract passengers who desire some level of comfort.
Transport manager at the O.A. Travel and Tours Transport Station Kingsley Osei pointed out that the power of air conditioners are one of the considerations they make before purchasing busses especially for travels to northern Ghana where temperatures are conventionally higher.
KsTU Engineering
Head of the Center for renewable energy and energy efficiency of the Kumasi technical University, Engineer Professor Julius Cudjoe Ahiekpor observed that the cost of enjoying the comforts of long travels on such busses might be more expensive to clear than any traveler could imagine.
“Many of us are not aware that once you are using the air conditioner, the gasses that are doing the work for us to feel comfortable also has an impact on the environment. Fortunately we have advanced in the air-conditioning technology with some gasses that have minimal impact but as to whether we are using these gasses is another topic for discussion,” he elucidated.
While transport emissions in countries like the United States of America which has 277 million vehicles are growing by some 0.8% annually; Africa which has 72 million vehicles is increasing its transport emissions by 7% every year.
With annual transport emissions of 6,918 gigagrams, Ghana is part of a notorious list of seven countries whose carbon emissions form over 70% of transport emissions on the entire continent.
Professor Ing. Julius Cudjoe Ahiekpor describes this as unacceptable especially when Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change promises to expand efficient intra and intercity commercial transport.
“If you take out land use and its related activities, I am informed in that in the last reporting window which details our greenhouse emissions, transportation and the energy sector as a whole seems to be the number one now. It’s a big concern to all of us particularly when Ghana has an agenda to reduce our emission levels to what we call the baseline or business as usual scenarios,” Prof Aheakpor bemoaned.
Before you begin to sentence busses to damnation however Professor Ing. C. Ahiekpor notes that compared with each person driving their own vehicles on such long travels, busses tend to provide a climate mitigation solution as it reduces per head emissions.
“Whichever way, if I travelled alone in a V8 or my four-cylinder car, my contribution levels will be much more than if I had two more people with me. So the busses somehow are helping us to reduce the emission per capita but that does not mean they are not contributing to emissions,” he demonstrated.
Professor Ing. Julius C. Ahiekpor called for the relevant governmental agencies to work at speeding up Ghana’s vehicle testing and exhaust fumes standards regimes to allow the country reap its full benefits.
Ghana’s emissions might be minimal on the world stage. But as we cruise cool, we are actually accelerating into a hotter globe faster than we could ever imagine.
With the collaboration of DW Acadamie and Penplusbytes Climate Change Journalism; Listen to the full report on the harmful GHG effects of travelling by clicking the link:
