The first batch of 30 environment-friendly passenger buses, which burn compressed natural gas, were recently seen running in Wuhan, capital city of central China's Hubei province.

The Wuhan Morning News said the central city plans to renovate 1,500 such public passenger buses in next two years, as well as about 6,000 taxies in the future.

The move may help reduce 97 percent of carbon monoxide, 24 percent of carbon dioxide and 90 percent of sulfur dioxide in auto emissions and also help lower auto noise, said the newspaper.

According to the newspaper, the Wuhan Public Transport Group has reached an agreement with a local natural gas company recently, promising to establish two natural gas stations and more than 20 gas branches in Wuhan, at the total cost of 258 million yuan (31.9 million US dollars).

When these natural gas stations are in service, the Group may save fuel costs of about 60 million yuan for public passenger buses and about 73 million yuan for taxies, said the newspaper.

The Chinese government has intensified the research and development of environment-friendly public transport automobiles and clean energy resources to deal with its severe pollution problem, much of which is due to motor vehicles.

Many big cities besides Wuhan, including Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, Shenyang, Changsha, Chengdu, Lanzhou, Xi'an and Xiamen, have all begun popularizing environment-friendly public transport automobiles and clean fuel such as compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas.

Source: Xinhua