Today scooter engines, tomorrow the world

An estimated 50 million two-stroke scooter and motorcycle engines in Asia emit as much pollution as 2.5 billion cars – more cars than there are on the entire planet.

The idea of reducing the emissions of those small engines enough to make a difference in some of the most populated cities in the world is daunting.

But a Fort Collins-based company is trying to do just that, one vehicle at a time.

By this summer, Envirofit International, a venture that started as a nonprofit company in 2003, expects to complete the construction of an installation and service center in Vigan, the Philippines. The center will replace the carburetors of that city’s entire fleet of 3,000 motorcycle taxis with direct injection.

So far, municipal leaders in the Philippines see such retrofitting as an economically viable way to reduce pollution and please national and international leaders putting pressure on the country to cut its vehicle emissions.

Reducing pollution

Two-stroke engines are common in scooters and motorcycles, which are often equipped with sidecars and used as taxis in Asia. The inexpensive vehicles have a long lifespan, but the engines are dirty. About one-third of the gasoline burns directly out the tailpipe in a trail of black smoke.

That and other vehicle emissions result is pollution so thick, people in some Asian cities can almost taste it. Pollution has been linked to premature deaths and increased public-health costs.

“It’s hard for Americans to imagine pollution that bad,´ said Brock Silvers, who has been CEO of Envirofit for about a year. “The best day in an Asian city is a lot worse than the worst pollution day in Denver.”

The challenge is figuring out how to reduce pollution without hurting the economy. In large and small cities alike, people couldn’t get around without taxis. In countries like India, citizens can afford to drive scooters, but not cars.

Many in the automotive industry believed the only option was to replace two-stroke-engine vehicles for the cleaner, albeit more expensive, four-stroke engine.

“That doesn’t really work, though, because nothing ever gets thrown away in Asia,” Silvers said. “People would pass their two-stroke engine along to someone else, and it would remain on the road.”

A few years ago, mechanical engineering student researchers at Colorado State University came up with another option while trying to produce the cleanest snowmobile engine for Clean Snowmobile Challenge. They discovered that replacing the carburetor in two-stroke engines with direct injection technology significantly reduces emissions.

The CSU technology caught the attention of the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation, which has worked on environmental projects in Asia. The foundation invited Bryan Wilson, CSU professor of mechanical engineering, to Manila to explore the possibility of retrofitting the Philippines’ two-stroke engines.

That invitation led to the creation of Envirofit.

Using grants and donations, Envirofit spent two years developing the technology. Silvers was hired a year ago to market the company and generate interest in retrofitting in Asia.

Silvers has worked in China as a partner in an investment firm that worked on power-generation projects. Most of his experience has been with industrial companies.

“We’ve just made the jump from an engineering idea to a small company,” Silvers said. “To become a large company, we have to figure out how to streamline the installation process.”

Making a difference

In its infancy, Envirofit leaders thought they would go first to large Asian cities such as Manila. But it’s hard to see a difference in big cities, where the majority of pollution comes from buses and other vehicles.

So Envirofit forged a relationship with Vigan, a city of 50,000 to 80,000 people – 50,000 permanent residents and another 30,000 who either work or travel there during the day. Founded in the 16th century as a Spanish colonial outpost, Vigan has a checkerboard street plan lined with buildings that have lower-level shops, offices and warehouses surrounded by thick stone walls and upper-level residences made of wood.

The architecture landed the city on the roster of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Sites in 1999. The city depends on tourism for much of its economy, and taxis are the primary source of the city’s pollution. That makes retrofitting the city’s 3,000 motorcycle taxis attractive to the local government.

“Tourists don’t want to stay in dirty places,” Silvers said. “You also have these beautiful buildings being eaten away by emissions.”

Recent Envirofit field tests show retrofitting makes a difference. A study of three small fleets of tricycle-taxis in Manila showed a 75 percent reduction in carbon monoxide emissions and an 88 percent reduction in hydrocarbon emissions. Fuel efficiency increased 30 percent in retrofitted engines, and oil efficiency increased 50 percent.

For the average Filipino taxi driver, that means a $1 to $2 savings in gasoline and oil per day. That amounts to about a 20 percent raise for taxi drivers who typically make $8 a day.

Retrofitting costs about $275 per engine, although Silvers said he hopes to reduce the cost to about $200 as the company increases production and improves its supply chain.

Financing for retrofitting comes from micro-loans, which are common in developing countries. Financiers lend money to the individual taxi drivers, who pay back the loan with the gas and oil savings from the retrofit.

While Envirofit completes its installation and service center, the mayor of Vigan, Ferdinand Medina, is working on establishing micro-loans for the taxi drivers.

Other cities, nations

By July, Envirofit expects to begin retrofitting the city’s taxis. The company plans to measure the city’s pollution reduction, and it’s not the only one interested in the results.

Envirofit has presented the technology to the Philippine League of Mayors, which has expressed interest in retrofitting taxis in other cities.

Envirofit has 10 U.S. employees and will have 20 to 25 employees in the Philippines before summer.

The company also has its eyes on other nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam, China, India and Thailand. Envirofit could go one of two ways in other nations: either find an auto service center in a city with which to partner, or forge ahead and work on its own, much like the company has done in Vigan. The company hopes to retrofit 100,000 engines by 2007.

Silvers said Envirofit may look at other U.N. World Heritage sites, where non-governmental organizations are willing to subsidize projects that protect the area.

“We’d like to do as many markets as we can,” Silvers said. “But there’s also something to be said for following the tourist sites, where the economy is driven by tourism and there’s a desire to protect historic sites.”

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