http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1671722,00.html Guardian Unlimited | Special reports |
Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution' Ian Sample, science correspondent Wednesday December 21, 2005 The Guardian Motorbikes are churning out more pollution than cars, even though they make up only a small fraction of vehicles on the roads, according to a report. Tests on a selection of modern motorbikes and private cars revealed that rather than being more environmentally-friendly, motorbikes emit 16 times the amount of hydrocarbons, including greenhouse gases, three times the carbon monoxide and a "disproportionately high" amount of other pollutants, compared to cars. Ana-Marija Vasic at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, who led the research, said the need to legislate on emissions from motorbikes has been overlooked because there are so few on the roads. The oversight has lead to a paucity of research into ways of making their engines run more cleanly. In Britain, there are 1,060,000 motorbikes on the road but more than 25m private cars. Dr Vasic's tests showed that, especially in urban traffic, when motorcyclists frequently accelerated quickly, motorbike engines burned fuel inefficiently, giving a sharp peak in emissions. The yearly hydrocarbon emissions of the average two-wheeler in urban traffic measured up to 49 times higher than that of the average car, according to the study, due to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. "The importance of [motorbike] emissions has been underestimated in legislation, giving manufacturers little motivation to improve aftertreatment systems," said Dr Vasic. The tests were carried out on a variety of Yamaha, Piaggio and Honda 50cc scooters and Suzuki, Honda and BMW motorbikes with engine sizes ranging from 800cc to 1150cc. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
