Developing Partnership For Disseminating Environmentally Sound Technologies

The development and use of cleaner fossil fuels represents one of the important measures for reducing Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions and achieving the energy sector sustainability. Arab countries have achieved during the last two decades reasonable success in promoting the use of cleaner fuels particularly Natural Gas in the power sector. Meanwhile fuel cells and compressed natural gas (CNG) are emerging as potential sources of alternate fuels for transport, with rapid advances in the technology, resulting in more efficient energy use, the economics becoming more viable and feasible. This is certainly the case for CNG powered vehicles, which is emerging as an attractive market potential. To enable the dissemination of such sustainable technology, a number of stakeholders need to coordinate their efforts and build a well-organized partnership for achieving this objective. Key partners to this effort include private / public research centers, fuel suppliers, vehicle manufactures, funding agencies, regulators, market developers, environmental NGOs and activists, end-users, etc. These stakeholders are collectively responsible for developing a strategic framework for smooth dissemination of environmentally sound technologies. They are also expected to work in partnership, each within own capacity and mandate, toward achieving several main goals including: Awareness, Access to technology, Capacity building, and Financing and Market development. This paper reviews available environmentally sound technology for transport with emphasis on compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. Related experiences and potentials in the Western Asia Region are also presented. The paper also discusses the requirements needed to achieve the above-mentioned goals and identifies the potential stakeholders involved in each. Furthermore, a general strategy framework for implementing the use of CNG vehicles technology in the ESCWA region member states is proposed