South Korea Needs Fuel Change

As South Korea’s population grows, it is becoming more and more essential for governmental involvement in industry to help stave the overwhelming effects of pollution on the nation’s air quality. In the late 1990s, South Korea’s environment was put into jeopardy by efforts of its industry to boost economic growth at all costs. Industry shifted into high gear without being mindful of the enormous amounts of particulates and carbon emissions released into the air as a result. Recent governmental controls have helped clean up efforts, and carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions by industry have been largely lessened. Unfortunately for South Korea, with economic growth and prosperity, millions more automobiles have become accessible by consumers, and their emissions are now surpassing the environmental effects rendered by industry a decade earlier.

The total volume of particulate matter (soot, carbon, sulfur, etc) released by the country’s motor vehicles has been estimated at 1.6 million metric tons each year. Transportation vehicles, such as large city buses and commercial fleets distributing product throughout the country, account for under 10% of all vehicles on their roads but emit a whopping 40% of these detrimental emissions into South Korea’s air. These large amounts of particulate released affect the health and quality of life of South Korean citizens, especially in large cities like Seoul. Seoul has seen a rampant rise in cases of respiratory disease as a direct result of a lack of governmental regulatory control over the hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles swamping the city’s streets on a daily basis.

Thanks to recommendations and suggestions from studies by the World Health Organization, the city government of Seoul and the national government of South Korea as a whole are making efforts to curb these polluting trends. South Korean government is promoting new alternatives for transportation companies by offering incentives for more environmentally conscious energy use. Research and development teams have worked to show the overwhelming value that compressed natural gas (CNG) could play in efforts to clean up the air that South Koreans breathe. CNG burns cleaner than gasoline, requires less oil usage, and promotes a cleaner environment by releasing a fraction of the amount of particulates into the air versus traditional gasoline powered engines. The government has offered tax breaks and incentives to private transportation outfits in order to promote the substitution of over 20,000 CNG buses to replace current diesel powered buses. By instituting stricter controls over allowable emissions by motor vehicles, South Korea could make cleaner air a reality. Petroleum companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corp have the ability to refine petroleum into the clean burning CNG needed to run greener, cleaner buses, that can help make the air that all citizenry breathe healthier.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.