CAIRO — A dusty, smoggy agglomeration of 16 million people and 1.2 million vehicles tightly squeezed into a narrow valley along the Nile, Greater Cairo is hardly the poster child of the environmental movement.
Mornings bring a pale, acrid haze that blots out buildings and burns the lungs. Clothes left on balconies for just a few hours acquire a patina of soot and grime. Levels of dangerous lead in the air are among the world's highest.
Lately, however, the city's taxi and bus drivers have been lining up to convert gasoline engines to run on CNG--compressed natural gas--a cheaper, cleaner-burning fuel that emits 86% less carbon monoxide and 83% fewer hydrocarbons than gasoline.
In just two years, Cairo has become a world leader in the number of privately owned vehicles running on CNG--with more than 5,000 on the road--and experts say the number of natural-gas taxis, minibuses and full-size buses in Egypt is about to skyrocket.
It's a positive trend for a city short on environmental good news. Health authorities love the switch to CNG because it helps clear the air. The government loves it because Egypt has abundant reserves of natural gas, and by substituting natural gas in vehicles, more of the country's scarce petroleum can be exported to earn hard currency.
But most of the enthusiasm is coming from the minibus and taxi drivers, who say it cuts their fuel costs by more than 50%.
At the Mosadak filling station in Giza's Dokki district, station manager Mustafa Rabia said his technicians convert up to 20 taxis and minibuses a day to run on CNG in addition to gasoline.
"I heard from people who converted that it was a lot cleaner," Mohammed Ezzat, a gray-haired veteran of the taxi ranks, said as he lined up to have his gas cylinder refilled at a station. "But the main reason I converted is to save money."
"If it all sounds too good to be true, in this case, it actually is" true, said James L. Goggin, a project officer in the environment office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is working with the Cairo Transport Authority and the Oil Ministry to promote CNG for buses as part of the Cairo air improvement project.
Emissions, especially from buses using heavy-duty diesels, are the chief culprit in central Cairo's air problems, he said.
