China Drawing Up New 2018-2020 Crackdown on Smog: Official
31 January 2018 13:02 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Beijing - China is drawing up plans to extend curbs on smog over the 2018-2020 period, an environment ministry official said on Wednesday, after a five-year crackdown on pollution helped it meet its air quality targets last month.
Liu Youbin, a spokesman at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said officials were working on “a three-year battle plan in the war to protect blue skies”, involving tighter regulations for major industrial regions like Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas.
The new three-year plan was expected to be completed in the first half of this year, Liu told reporters after a formal briefing.
“It will continue to make Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei its key focus but it will also focus on other major regions like the Yangtze river delta, the northeast and Chengdu-Chongqing,” he added.
China’s previous action plan, covering 2013-2017, forced the smog-prone Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to take action to reduce concentrations of hazardous particles known as PM2.5 by more than 25 percent.
Despite near-record PM2.5 readings in January and February last year, northern China managed to meet 2013-2017 air quality targets by the end of 2017, largely thanks to a campaign that forced polluting factories in 28 cities to reduce output over the winter.
The campaign is due to end in March and China has been trying to “normalize compliance” and put firms under more permanent scrutiny amid concerns that enterprises and local governments could lower their guard after meeting 2017 targets.
Beijing has already sought to impose new “special emissions restrictions” on enterprises in major industrial sectors in northern China.
Liu said China would continue to tackle “scattered” coal-burning sources - a major source of uncontrolled pollution in provinces like Hebei - and would also “steadily” promote clean energy heating.
According to local media reports this week, Hebei was forced to suspend its plans to convert large numbers of coal-fired heating boilers to natural gas after winter supply shortages left thousands of households without heat.
However, Liu denied the reports, telling reporters the Hebei government would “continue to pay close attention” to its coal-to-gas conversion efforts.
Liu Zhiquan, head of the MEP’s monitoring office, told the briefing that average PM2.5 readings for the whole of China from Jan. 1-28 stood at 64 micrograms per cubic meter, down 20 percent on the year.
Concentrations in Beijing fell 70.5 percent to 36 micrograms per cubic meter, close to the state standard of 35 micrograms.
However, average readings in the Yangtze and Pearl river deltas, which include Shanghai and Guangzhou respectively, actually increased over the month, he said, without giving details.
REUTERS