China News: Beijing dust storm expected to linger until Sunday (11 April 2014)

Beijing dust storm expected to linger until Sunday

The dust storm that has enshrouded the Chinese capital since Wednesday night won't disperse until Sunday, the city's environmental watchdog said.

Beijing was hit by another wave of floating dust and sand on Thursday, with the intensity of PM10 (particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 10 micrograms) reaching 595 micrograms per cubic meter in the southwestern part of the city, and 496 downtown.

According to the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center, the sandstorm originated in the northeastern part of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and has lingered in Beijing due to the slow wind speed close to the ground.

The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau warned the public to take precautions when going outside.

The amount of pollutants discharged in the capital last year was much greater than the environment could handle, with PM2.5 exceeding standards, according to a 2013 Beijing Environment Bulletin released by the bureau on Thursday.

PM2.5 is particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrograms that is extremely harmful to health.

Despite efforts to curb pollution, the bureau said in the report that the quality of the capital's environment in 2013 remained almost the same as that of the previous year.

Liu Xianshu, director of the environmental monitoring department of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, said there is a gap between air quality in the southern and northern parts of the city.

According to the bulletin, the PM2.5 in the capital has an average annual intensity of 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter, 156 percent higher than the standard.

"The average PM2.5 index monitored in the north was 60.3 micrograms per cubic meter last year, while it stood at 116.3 in the south, about twice the amount of the north," Liu said.

The average index of nitrogen dioxide and PM10 was 56 and 108.1 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the national standards by 40 and 54 percent. The daily maximum eight-hour average ozone concentration exceeded the standard by 14.6 percent.

Among all the six pollutants monitored in the city, only the index for sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide met the standards last year.

The rapid urbanization and population growth has seriously affected the city's ecological system, he said.

The monitoring stations in high-traffic areas witness a much greater PM2.5 intensity, while some mountainous regions in the northern and western suburbs have better air and water quality.

Liu said the government will add more trees, grassland and wetland in the capital and replace some industrial land with forests.

source from: http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2014-04/11/content_32061916.htm

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China News: Six polluting industries to move out of Beijing (10 April 2014)

Six polluting industries to move out of Beijing

Six heavily polluting industries, all involving manufacturing, will move out of Beijing, said a senior official of the Beijing municipal government during a dialogue with citizens on April 8.

Six heavily polluting industries, all involving manufacturing, will move out of Beijing.

Zhang Boxu, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Economics and Information Technology, said the six polluting industries involve casting, foundries, electro-forging, brick sintering and waterproofing materials.

Zhang made the remark during a dialogue with citizens as a guest on Beijing Public Service Radio on Tuesday. "But research and development (R&D), design and marketing sections of the industries will not move," he said.

Zhang explained that all links in the production process should be carefully considered, and there are bound to be some differences, for example, R&D, design and marketing sections will be kept in the same place because they have high added value and are comparatively environmentally friendly.

"The manufacturing industry has a high demand for resources and a significant impact on environment, while Beijing is deficient in natural resources," said Zhang. "To adjust the industrial structure in order to meet the requirements of city development, is to take advantages of strengths while avoiding weaknesses."

Zhang said that corresponding policies, laws and regulations will gradually be issued for the adjustment of the industrial structure.

In fact, as air pollution poses an increasingly serious threat to Beijing, the municipal government has issued a series of guidelines over the past two years on how to adjust the industrial structure to meet the demands of the city's development, involving industries of petrochemicals, iron and steel, building materials, machinery, light industry, and nonferrous metals, Zhang said.

Speaking of whether the polluting enterprises will be relocated to areas surrounding Beijing, Zhang said that the enterprises will not be accepted anywhere unless they have reached the required national emission standards by taking effective measures.

Zhang also revealed that the municipal government supports the establishment of an industrial demonstration belt in the surrounding areas of Beijing and Hebei Province in compliance with national environmental standards.

Mr. Li, a worker at Beijing Wanruilang Precise Casting Co. Ltd., said that quite a lot of casting and forging enterprises have closed down or moved out of Beijing over the past few years, and a similar thing has been happening in many parts of the country. "Many enterprises from the six polluting industries have branches outside Beijing," he said.

A worker from the Beijing Foundry and Metal-forming Association agreed with Mr. Li, saying that there were more than 300 casting and forging enterprises in Beijing in 2006 and the number has now dropped to less than 100, with most of them located in suburbs.

Chen Ji, a professor from the Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB), said the six industries to be moved out the capital city are all traditional industries that have high input, high pollution, high energy consumption and low output.

Professor Chen, who is also director of the China Center for the Research of Industrial Economics at CUEB, said that the enterprises that are getting left behind are medium and small township-owned ones with low added value, and the relocation will help rather than harm their future development.

source from: http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2014-04/11/content_32062596.htm

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China News: Beijing cuts car sales quota to curb air pollution (08 Nov 2013)

Beijing cuts car sales quota to curb air pollution

2013-11-08

Article type: Redistributed

Beijing will cut its new car sales quota by almost 40 percent next year in a bid to reduce vehicle emissions and curb severe air pollution, according to a new policy released on the Beijing government website on Tuesday. Beijing will issue 150 thousand new license plates every year, from 2014 to 2017. That means there will be only 600 thousand new passenger vehicles in Beijing in the next four years, fewer than the city’s vehicle sales in 2010 alone, according to the Beijing government website. Moreover, the new policy will increase annual sales quotas for new-energy vehicles from 20,000 in 2014 to 60,000 in 2017, accounting for 40 percent of the 2017 total license plate quota. Beijing will perfect its differentiated parking charge policy in 2014, and officially bring it into force in 2015, the policy said. The new policy has ruled out imposing a congestion charge in Beijing in 2014. source from: http://english.mep.gov.cn/News_service/media_news/201311/t20131108_263094.htm

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China Update: Beijing to replace coal-burning power plants (5 Oct 2013)

Beijing to replace coal-burning power plants

Beijing will build four power centers by the end of 2014 to replace coal with natural gas in heating and power generation, municipal authorities said Saturday.

Construction of the centers is part of the city's efforts to optimize energy mix and reduce emissions, according to officials with the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform.

With investment of 47.7 billion yuan (7.79 billion U.S. dollars), the four power centers and 40 other related utility projects will reduce sulfur dioxide by 10,000 tonnes, provide heating for 100 million square meters and generate 7.2 million kilowatts of electricity through natural gas.

These services have so far been powered by four coal-fired power plants, which burned 9.2 million tonnes of coal in 2012, or 40 percent of the 23 million tonnes Beijing consumed in the same period. They will be shut down once the new power centers start operation.

Heavy smog shrouded Beijing's sky during the seven-day National Day Holiday, prompting concern about worsening air pollution in the nation's capital. Coal burning accounts for 16.7 percent of airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 microns, or PM 2.5, that is blamed for the smog.

In a recently published action plan on cleaning Beijing's air, municipal authorities vowed to slash coal consumption by 1.3 million tonnes by 2017. 

source from :

http://english.mep.gov.cn/News_service/media_news/201310/t20131008_261239.htm

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China Update: Beijing targets polluting cars to clean up air (9 Oct 2013)

Welcome to Beijing.

The slogan used to greet visitors during the 2008 Olympics lost some of its luster if you traveled to the capital in the last few days of the National Day holiday.

From Thursday to Sunday, the city was shrouded in the heaviest smog in months, and neighboring Tianjin municipality and Hebei province were no exception.

On Monday, cold air pushed the smog southward to central and southern parts of North China, as the National Meteorological Center continued issuing a smog warning for the region.

"It's completely different from the golden autumn that I had expected in Beijing," said Wang Zhidong, a 37-year-old tourist from Tianjin who visited the capital during the holiday.

The pollution also reduced visibility, causing traffic congestion on expressways and flight delays.

The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said high humidity and lack of wind were the major reasons for the haze.

Yu Jianhua, who is in charge of air pollution management at the bureau, said the size of the city and the fact that it is ringed on three sides by mountains has made it hard to disperse pollutants.

Beijing has been hit frequently by smog in recent years. The city had 14 smoggy days from Sept 1 to 28, about 10 more than the average in the same period for the past 20 years, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Pollutants emitted by cars are the major cause of the smog. Coal consumption in neighboring regions and dust from construction sites also contribute, according to the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.

Car emissions have become a major source for air pollution in big cities, accounting for 58 percent of the nitrogen oxide, 40 percent of the volatile organic compounds and 22 percent of fine particles in Beijing's air, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

To tackle pollution caused by vehicles, a senior ministry official has suggested the government collect a fee from heavy-polluting vehicle owners, rather than giving out subsidies to phase out such vehicles.

"It is questionable issuing subsidies to the polluters by using money collected from everyone through taxes, which is against the basic concept of ‘holding those who cause pollution responsible for clearing it up' in environmental protection," said Ding Yan, deputy head of the ministry's vehicle emission control center.

As many as 15 million yellow-label cars — those that do not meet the phase 1 emission standards — will be removed from the roads nationwide by 2017, according to the Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013-17) unveiled by the central government last month.

Pollutants emitted by one yellow-label car equal the amount from 28 vehicles meeting phase 4 emission standards. They account for about 10 percent of the vehicles being used yet discharge 50 percent of the pollutants coming from automobiles, according to the ministry.

But removing them from the streets is no easy task. Policies in the past almost all saw subsidies from local governments to encourage yellow-label car owners to abandon the old cars.

Ding said the most rational move is to collect fees from yellow-label car owners, and use the fees to accelerate the upgrade of emission standards.

The plan also requires major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to strictly control the number of vehicles.

China has been the world's top automobile producer and seller for four consecutive years. During that period, the number of light motor vehicles has grown 20 percent every year, reaching 82 million at the end of 2011.

The total number of motor vehicles in China will reach 590 million by 2050, according to research by Tsinghua University.

"To ‘strictly control' does not mean to stop developing the industry, just a restriction to the pace," said Ding, adding that Beijing's annual growth in the number of vehicles was reduced from 800,000 to about 200,000, after the local government started to restrict the issuing of license plates.

The capital vows to keep the number of private cars to less than 6 million by the end of 2017, as compared with more than 5.2 million in early 2013.

source from :

http://english.mep.gov.cn/News_service/media_news/201310/t20131009_261320.htm

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