Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : PUTRA WORLD TRADE CENTRE,
KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 01/10/96
Tajuk/Title : THE FIFTH BIENNIAL INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR NATURAL GAS
VEHICLES CONFERENCE (NGV `96)
1. I would like to thank the NGV '96 National
organising Committee for inviting me to officiate at
this Fifth Biennial International Association for
Natural Gas Vehicles Conference and Exhibition. It
is indeed a great pleasure for me to be here this
morning to address such a distinguished gathering of
experts and representatives of both the business and
Government sectors in the NGV industry from all over
the world. I am happy that Malaysia has been chosen
to be the host for this conference and exhibition,
the first to be held in this region. I would like
to take this opportunity to wish all our foreign
visitors, especially those who are here for the
first time, a warm `Selamat Datang' to Malaysia.
2. It is indeed timely and appropriate that NGV
`96 is held here in Kuala Lumpur, at the very heart
of the fastest growing region in the world. The
Asian region has been experiencing continuous rapid
economic growth over the past decade where the need
to balance growth with environmental protection has
become a key factor in ensuring sustainable
development. Recognising this need, Malaysia places
considerable emphasis on environmental conservation
in all its national development plans and policies
and is committed to play an active role in
international and regional cooperation efforts to
combat environmental degradation. This is reflected
in the country's participation in various
international environmental conventions. Malaysia
has also played an active part in promoting
partnership between the North and the South in
combating global environmental deterioration,
particularly through the transfer of financial
resources and environmentally sound technologies
from the North as well as adequate responses on the
part of the South.
3. At the national level, the Government of
Malaysia continues to adopt the concept of balanced
growth as the basic thrust of the country's national
development policy, as outlined in our recently
launched Seventh Malaysia Plan for the 1996 - 2000
period to bring us nearer to our goal of Vision
2020. Under the Plan, environmental considerations
will increasingly be integrated in the formulation
of sectoral policies that provide for the
acquisition of the requisite technical, policy and
planning capability to deal with environmental
problems. Early preventive measures and the use of
more efficient and cost effective pollution control
measures through research and development efforts as
well as the acquisition of clean technology will be
encouraged to achieve the desired level of pollution
abatement. The usage of natural gas will also be
promoted more aggressively in the transport and
manufacturing sectors, including the utilisation of
gas by fleet owners and industries in the place of
less environmentally friendly fuels. All these
Government efforts will be complemented and
supported by the private sector through their
investment in environmental and natural resource
management programmes.
4. This public-private sector linkage is essential
for ensuring balanced growth and is very much in
line with the main thrust of the Strategic Plan of
Action on the Environment currently being
implemented under the ASEAN environmental
cooperation framework within the ambit of the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development.
In encouraging the integration of environmental
factors in all developmental processes at the
national and regional levels, the Strategic Plan
calls for the promotion of Government-Private sector
interactions towards the development of policies
that mutually support the thrust of each sector.
5. Such interactions should be encouraged at both
the regional as well as the international levels.
As trade liberalisation in the present World Trade
Organisation era intensifies, leading to increased
economic and transportation activities in the global
market, transboundary movement of hazardous wastes
and even polluted air particles need to be
controlled and other environmental management issues
addressed through close international cooperation.
International forums like this Conference can, I
believe, offer an effective platform for fostering
such close interactions and cooperation towards
forging a clean global environment.
6. One of the key issues that needs to be
seriously considered in the efforts to establish and
preserve a clean global environment is air
pollution. Air pollution is fast becoming a major
environmental concern of most Governments, with the
rapid deterioration of air quality especially in
urban areas. Increasing transportation activities
arising from rapid industrial growth and
urbanisation are the main contributing factors to
the persistently prevailing problem of air pollution
in the world today. The transportation sector in
most countries consumes a large portion of their
final supply of energy mainly in the form of petrol
and diesel which need to be continuously improved to
reduce the pollutants being emitted into the
atmosphere. In Malaysia, for instance, the
transportation sector consumed some 40 per cent of
the country's total commercial energy demand in 1995
and is anticipated to continue to grow at about 8.1
per cent per annum. I believe this same situation is
also faced by most other countries.
7. With the transportation sector remaining as a
major source of air pollution, efforts must be taken
to overcome this problem. The seriousness and the
long term negative impact of air pollution cannot be
overemphasised. If left to persist, it can bring
harmful effects to our health and economy which will
result in increasing health and social costs being
incurred. It is therefore vital that concerted and
coordinated efforts be made to reduce the impact of
polluting fuel emissions from vehicles. To overcome
this problem, there is no one single solution. It
involves a combination of efforts which include
improving public transport, traffic zoning and
management, car pooling, use of low emission
vehicles and technologies, and promoting the use of
cleaner fuel such as natural gas.
8. In this regard, I am pleased to say that the
Government of Malaysia is committed to continue to
carry out every measure possible to improve the air
quality in the country, particularly in the urban
areas. On-going measures being taken to mitigate
the decline in air quality include the strengthening
of enforcement efforts and control by the Department
of Environment, Police and the Road Transport
Department to reduce black smoke emission from
vehicles through the use of cleaner engine and
efficient exhaust system as well as the reduction of
lead content in petrol from 0.84 to 0.15 grammes per
litre as required under the Environmental Quality
Act Regulations. As a result of these measures, we
have managed to maintain a generally good level of
air quality in the country except for the most
industrialised and urbanised areas. The Government
is currently implementing programmes to ensure a
clean environment in these areas.
9. These programmes include the relocation of the
federal administrative centre in Kuala Lumpur to
Putrajaya to reduce urban congestion and pollution
in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley, improvement of
the Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley urban transport
system through the implementation of the Light Rail
Transit system and the consolidation of the public
transport system. Environmentally-friendly
transport programmes such as the natural gas for
vehicles are also being promoted.
10. Natural gas for vehicles or NGV certainly has a
major role to play in alleviating the air pollution
problem. As NGV burns much cleaner than petrol or
diesel, its use can reduce significantly the amount
of harmful air pollutants emitted from vehicles.
Although natural gas vehicles still emit some
harmful pollutants, they are at present the most
commercially viable clean alternative transportation
mode. Countries endowed with an abundant supply of
natural gas should tap the gas resources available
to provide an alternative fuel that will help lessen
the deterioration of air quality. We must not allow
the high capital involved in the construction of
infrastructure for natural gas projects such as the
NGV programme to stand in the way of our developing
our gas resources for the benefit and well- being of
our people. In the long term, the benefits to be
accrued from the implementation of these natural gas
programmes will far outweigh the high cost of
healthcare and environmental damage to the
Government and the people caused by air pollution.
11. Despite the anticipated long term benefits of
NGV, statistics show that it is still not as widely
used as it should be in most countries. Based on
the 1995 estimated worldwide NGV fleets, out of the
total of about one million and nineteen thousand
natural gas vehicles in the world, almost ninety
nine per cent are concentrated in only six
countries, namely Argentina, the Central Independent
States, Italy, Canada, New Zealand and the United
States of America. This means that there is a vast
potential for the future expansion of the NGV
industry and I believe Government related
authorities, suppliers, vendors and gas
organisations such as the International Association
for Natural Gas Vehicles can play a leading role in
facilitating the rapid development of the industry.
In Malaysia, NGV was introduced in May 1992 with 450
vehicles converted to run on dual fuel by the end of
the year. Today, the number of vehicles using NGV
has increased to about 990. We are currently taking
positive steps to reduce the cost of the NGV
facility to make the NGV programmes more viable and
affordable.
12. Presently, we are already implementing gas
development programmes to tap the abundant gas
resources in the country to spearhead the expansion
of the NGV industry together with other gas related
projects. The development of our NGV industry
largely depends on the phased completion of the
Peninsular Gas Utilisation Project, commonly known
as PGU which was launched by PETRONAS in the early
eighties. The PGU and Malaysian Gas Distribution
projects are expected to provide the pipeline
infrastructure to supply gas to the NGV refuelling
outlets in urban areas where there is a large number
of vehicles. When the PGU project is completed as
scheduled by 1998, we would expect the number of
vehicles using NGV to increase even further.
13. The Government is committed to increase efforts
to encourage the wider utilisation of NGV and is
actively promoting the fuel in suitable areas such
as the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang,
in New urban areas such as the new federal capital
of Putrajaya and wherever it is possible for the
Government to encourage the use of natural gas,
particularly in areas where air quality is fast
deteriorating. In addition, the Government also
provides incentives to make the use of NGV viable.
14. However, for the implementation of the NGV
programme to succeed, it needs more than just the
Government's efforts and commitment to effect any
measures to keep the air clean. It needs the
commitment and cooperation of the whole community,
from the public sector to the private commercial,
industrial and individual consumers as it affects
their personal health and well-being. It is
therefore everyone's responsibility to preserve the
air quality around us. The Government, for its
part, will continue to provide the policy support
and incentives for assuring good environmental
management practices. On the other hand, the
private sector, particularly those directly involved
in the transportation sector such as the oil
companies, fleet vehicles operators, companies that
own vehicles and the individual vehicle owners must
play a more prominent and complementary role in
helping to reduce air pollution by investing in
better environmentally-friendly technologies, using
cleaner fuels and helping to educate and create
greater awareness of the importance of maintaining a
clean air environment.
15. In this regard, I am pleased to note that
PETRONAS and Proton, the National car manufacturer,
are jointly taking a step forward to develop a
monogas vehicle. This augurs well for the
development of the NGV industry not only in Malaysia
but also in the region. I hope that the monogas
vehicle can be adopted as part of an ASEAN programme
to overcome the air pollution problem in the region.
To this end, closer cooperation must be fostered at
all levels-local, regional and international, as air
pollution is borderless. Together, we should all
work towards a clean air environment for our cities.
In this context, the theme for this Conference -
"Driving To Cleaner Cities" is most appropriate. I
hope that through the close interaction and
networking among Conference participants, greater
cooperation can be fostered as well as joint
programmes and new ideas formulated to expedite the
development and wider utilisation of NGV globally.
Cooperation programmes such as the Clean Cities and
Healthy Cities Programmes are good examples of
efforts that can be initiated between cities in
sharing and pooling resources towards tackling air
pollution problems in the cities. In this way, we
can bring about a better and healthier environment
that will be appreciated by our children,
grandchildren and the generations to come.
16. Finally, I wish all of you an interesting and
fruitful Conference and to our foreign guests, I
wish you all an enjoyable and pleasant stay in
Malaysia.
17. On this note, I now have the pleasure to
declare open the Fifth Biennial International
Association For Natural Gas Vehicles Conference and
Exhibition.
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