September 12, 2013
China’s Plan to Curb Air Pollution Sets Limits on Coal Use and
Vehicles
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — The Chinese government announced an ambitious plan on Thursday
to curb air pollution across the nation, including setting some limits on burning
coal and taking high-polluting vehicles off the roads to ensure a drop in the
concentration of particulate matter in cities.
The plan, released by the State Council, China’s cabinet, filled in a broad outline
that the government had issued this year. It represents the most concrete
response yet by the Communist Party and the government to growing criticism
over allowing the country’s air, soil and water to degrade to abysmal levels
because of corruption and unchecked economic growth.
The criticism has been especially pronounced in some of China’s largest cities,
where anxious residents grapple with choking smog that can persist for days and
even weeks. In January, the concentration of fine particulate matter in Beijing
reached 40 times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health
Organization.
Environmental advocates, including some at Greenpeace East Asia, said the plan
did not go far enough, while others praised it for at least acknowledging some of
the basic causes of the country’s chronic air pollution. But there was wide
agreement that the ultimate test would come in how it is carried out and
enforced.
Chinese cities suffer from some of the worst air pollution in the world, with
outdoor pollution having accounted for 1.2 million premature deaths in China in
2010, according to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study. Increasingly, air
pollution is changing everyday life. Face masks are becoming more ubiquitous in
the cities, and some affluent parents increasingly choose schools more for their
air filtration systems than for their academics. The environment is emerging as a
potent political issue.
For years China has had an array of strict environmental standards on paper, and
its leaders talk constantly about the need to improve the environment. But
enforcement has been lax, and the environment has continued to deteriorate at
an alarming rate.
“The plan successfully identifies the root cause of air pollution in China: China’s
industrial structure,” said Ma Jun, a prominent environmental advocate.
“Industrialization determines the structure of energy consumption. If China does
not upgrade its coal-dependent industries, coal consumption can never be
curbed.” he said. “The key to preventing air pollution is to curb coal burning —
China burns half of all the coal consumed in the world.”
Under the new plan, concentrations of fine particulate matter must be reduced by
25 percent in the Beijing-Tianjian-Hebei area in the north, 20 percent in the
Yangtze River Delta in the east and 15 percent in the Pearl River Delta in the
south, compared with 2012 levels.
All other cities must reduce the levels of larger particulate matter, known as PM
10, by 10 percent. It is unclear why the plan calls for a looser standard for other
cities, since the fine particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, is considered deadlier
than PM 10 because it can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the
bloodstream
The plan said Beijing must also bring its average concentration of PM 2.5 down to
60 micrograms per cubic meter or less. That would be two and a half times the
recommended exposure limit set by the World Health Organization.
For years, Chinese officials kept measurements of PM 2.5 from the public. But
many Chinese in Beijing turned to a Twitter feed from the United States Embassy
to see the hourly PM 2.5 reading from a monitoring machine on the embassy
rooftop. That, in turn, put pressure on the government to have cities start
releasing their PM 2.5 measurements. Beijing began reporting PM 2.5 levels in
January 2012, and the official Xinhua news agency has reported that 74 cities are
supposed to be releasing their PM 2.5 data this year.
On Thursday, pollution climbed to levels that the embassy rated “very
unhealthy,” with a PM 2.5 concentration at 10 p.m. at 213 micrograms per cubic
meter. Much of the city’s downtown skyline was obscured by a thick haze.
Coal consumption has grown rapidly in China, and the plan places only modest
limits on consumption, with coal to account for no more than 65 percent of
energy use in 2017, compared with around 67 percent last year. Some of the
plan’s critics said they were disappointed that there were no specific limits on
coal consumption by region. The plan allows local governments to set those limits
on their own.
“Instead of setting a goal to reduce coal burning for each province, the action plan
gives each province the power to set goals for themselves, which leads to the goals
being very conservative,” said Huang Wei, who works on climate and energy
advocacy at Greenpeace East Asia.
The plan addressed vehicle emissions by removing all high-polluting “yellow
label” vehicles that were registered before the end of 2005 from the roads by the
end of 2015. In the three regions with heavy industry, all such vehicles are to be
taken off the roads by 2015, and the same for all of China by 2017.
In those three regions, gasoline and diesel of a high standard, China V, will be
provided in certain cities. But the plan did not set targets for new vehicle
emissions standards, which some environmental advocates say is a major
omission. “We had been waiting for months for the new action plan,” Ms. Huang
said. “We thought it might be a pivot point in history. Now it’s here, and we think
it has very much fallen short of our expectations.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Mia Li contributed
research from Beijing.