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Political advisers suggested regional legislation to unify emission standards and other environmental protection indexes in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, to tackle the severe air pollution.
The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held a symposium recently to discuss how to change the terrible air pollution situation in Beijing and its neighborhood.
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A man wearing a facemask walks on a street beside the CCTV building in Beijing in a hazy day in April. [Photo by Wei Xiaochen/Asianewsphoto] |
According to an annual report on the air quality of 74 major cities in China released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in February, eight cities in the Beijing-Tian-Hebei area ranked among the ten cities with worst air quality. Baoding, in Hebei province, which is only one hour’s drive from the capital, topped the list, highlighting the lingering challenges faced by governments in the trilateral zone.
Political advisers and experts suggested unifying emission standards in the area, which means getting tougher with pollution in Beijing’s surrounding cities.
"Beijing has formulated 33 items of atmospheric protection standards stricter than the national standards, while most regions in Heibei and Tianjin still follow the national standards," Chen Hong, vice mayor of Beijing city, said.
She gave an example to illustrate the gap between the two sets of standards, "in terms of the admittance criterion of coal-fired boiler new projects, the national standards of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter emissions are respectively 45 times and 20 times that of Beijing."
The differing emission standards make the capital’s many efforts to contain pollution in vain. "In 2016, Beijing will forbid the high-polluting vehicles to enter the Six Ring Road, while other cities have no such regulations," Zheng Guangtai, a political adviser said, "so when the ban is implemented, these vehicles could leave Beijing and move around in the surrounding areas, but the generated pollution still remains in the city cluster."
The newly released Environment Protection Law has raised some general principles for jointly improving air quality cross cities. Chen Hong suggested adding a chapter on joint air pollution management in the Air Quality Prevention Act which is being revised. She also suggested formulating the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Pollution Prevention, using cases in Western countries for reference.
The political advisers also highlighted the energy supply issue. According to statistics from the Ministry of Environment Protection, coal still dominated energy resources consumption of the Beijing-Tian-Hebei area last year. The coal burned in Hebei accounted for 90 percent of its total energy consumption in 2014.
The governments tried to reduce coal consumption by using more natural gas, a major alternative energy source. But the shortage and high price of natural gas present an obstacle. "Hebei has an annual natural gas supply of 5.8 billion cubic meters, far from the 16 billion cubic meters needed to replace the 40 million tons of consumed coal reduced annually by 2017," Qin Boyong, vice governor of Hebei province.
Wang Xiaokang, president of China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group, put forward a new idea. He said the new clean-coal technologies are capable to realize emissions close to or even lower than natural gas, while to replace coal with natural gas is impractical with the limited natural gas resources currently.
Chen Hong suggested diversifying clean energy supply by making full use of the wind power generated in western China.
Experts also pointed that the unreasonable industrial distribution is to blame for the severe air pollution. Ji Lin, chairman of the CPPC Beijing Committee, said that Beijing will accelerate industrial transfer to remove some manufacturing enterprises outside the capital.
"The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area’s air pollution management largely depends on its industrial distribution optimization," Wang Xiaokang said.
