Silicon Valley: Delhi on May 22 received the US Department of Energy's first 'Clean Cities International Partner of the Year' award for its "bold efforts to curb air pollution and support alternative fuel initiatives".

The award, presented at the ninth National Clean Cities Conference and Exposition in Palm Springs, recognises the work done by Delhi "to build a progressive and successful compressed natural gas (CNG) programme that the world can look to with pride", the energy department said.

Delhi's chief secretary Shailaja Chandra, who received the award on behalf of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, said many cities around the world had undertaken clean fuel initiatives, but Delhi's success in converting the entire public transport to CNG-propelled vehicles was on a scale unparalleled anywhere else.

Chandra received the award from Tom Gross, director in the US Department of Energy (DOE).

Later, speaking at the closing plenary session titled "Mayors Who Make the AFV (alternative fuel vehicle) Difference," Chandra briefed the large audience, including US city mayors and foreign dignitaries, about Delhi's clean city vision and its successes and challenges.

As a result of the fastest growing CNG programme in the world, Delhi can today boast about its 66,000 CNG vehicles, including 9,000 buses and 53,000 taxis and three-wheelers. The programme followed a Supreme Court ruling in 1998 mandating the conversion of the entire New Delhi bus fleet to natural gas.

Acknowledging that Delhi still had other pollution problems, such as garbage and water pollution, the switch over to a cleaner fuel was a beginning and "a very, very important beginning, because air pollution affects every human being", Chandra said.

"Certainly Delhi has been an eye-opener in the country. One of the first remarks that visitors to the city invariably make is that the air is cleaner," she said.

Modelled after the US Department of Energy's clean cities programme, clean cities international is designed to facilitate the exchange of information on alternative fuels and on the successful programme to interested countries around the globe.

A successful clean city programme in Delhi is extremely important because it could serve as a model for not just the other Indian cities that would also need to meet tough emission norms, but for cities around the developing world.

PTI