Science Centres: Energy

Brisbane vehicle emissions tested

Auckland vehicles, Wellington vehicles, and now Brisbane vehicles: we have measured exhaust pollution from tens of thousands of vehicles.

Last month, Lou Reddish of NIWA spent five days monitoring vehicle emissions in Brisbane for Queensland Transport. We operated at three sites: two have high traffic volumes with a good mix of privately-owned and commercial vehicles; the third site leads to an industrial area with light-commercial, diesel traffic. From this, we can start to identify which parts of Brisbane’s vehicle fleet are most polluting.

NIWA’s remote sensing equipment measures vehicle emissions under real driving conditions. Drivers do not have to alter their speed or route at all. The monitoring equipment is set up on the side of the road, and shines an infrared beam through the exhaust plume towards a detector on the other side of the road. The vehicle’s exhaust absorbs some of the light enabling us to calculate various components of the exhaust.

The main purpose of the project was for Queensland Transport to assess the operational logistics of the remote sensing device in Brisbane. Queensland Transport is now considering running driver education and data collection programmes with the device in the future.