Impact of Energy Consumption and GHG Emission by Private Vehicles in Dhaka, the Capital of Bangladesh

Abstract

The last decade has been a fruitful time interval for Bangladesh to attain economic development which upgraded the economic status of this country to a developing or emerging one. The escalating and envious growth of GDP of this country from Indi-an sub-continent is more prominent among the economic development and increas-ing standard of living of the richer portion of the population. This indicates the pref-erence of using private vehicles for daily commuting in the capital city, Dhaka which accommodates most of the important government offices, business centers, reputed educational institutions and hospitals. Private vehicles definitely make life easier but its emission from the engine has got alarming impacts on the environment and its inhabitants. Dhaka is one of the cities which rank worst in the air quality in-dex. This leads to a necessity to investigate the contribution of automobile exhausts to the overall air pollution of Dhaka city. In this study, a survey was conducted on the private vehicles that are in operation within Dhaka city to obtain some infor-mation that would lead to analyzing the fuel consumption of different types of pri-vate vehicles, their energy requirement, and carbon dioxide emission. The survey conducted in different corners of Dhaka city and through online platforms provided the essential data that was helpful to analyze the condition from different perspec-tives. Comparative analysis of fuel economy, average annual fuel consumption, av-erage annual energy requirement, and average annual carbon dioxide emission of different vehicles was done in terms of their car model and manufacturing is done with a sample size which assures 95% confidence level for the total population size. In comparison to the capacity of the roads of Dhaka, the total number of vehicles that travel along the roads every day is huge which results in intolerable traffic jams almost every single working day of the week. Traffic jam has got adverse effect on fuel consumption and the waste of energy and excess amount of carbon dioxide emission due to its presence needs to be identified for corrective decision making. In this study, the traffic jam factor which results in additional losses and emissions have been measured for vehicles of different manufacturers and manufacturing year. The overall fuel and energy requirement and carbon dioxide emissions annually by the total number of private vehicles have been calculated on the basis of the survey.