Neighbors join Beijing in campaign to clean air
Print Edition
BEIJING is working with its surrounding areas to forge stronger cooperation in the battle to clean up the air in a region notorious for choking smog.
China’s capital and neighboring Tianjin and Hebei, along with Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong, plan to establish an expert committee to analyze root causes of air pollution and launch research into air-cleaning technologies.
The announcement was made by Li Lixin, an official with the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.
Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei will also work together to tackle nitrogen oxide, a harmful pollutant plaguing the region, said Li, who heads regional coordination in combating air pollution with the bureau.
They will enhance cooperation in law enforcement to prevent those who break regulations on emissions and coal use from fleeing to other areas to avoid punishment, she said.
Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei decided to form an alliance after a national action plan on air pollution was issued by the central government in September.
As required by the document, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region should cut PM2.5, a key indicator of air pollution, by 25 percent from 2012 levels by 2017.
The plan said all vehicles in major cities of the region should use fuels, including gasoline and diesel, in line with China’s leading National V standard by 2015 and remove heavy-polluting “yellow-label” vehicles registered before 2005 from the roads by the same year.
The region has also been told to achieve negative growth in coal consumption and replace coal-fired boilers, kilns and power plants with those fired by natural-gas by 2017.
The careers of local officials will be linked with their performance in implementing the plan, according to a detailed regulation released last month. Provincial governments will be assessed annually by 2017.
Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei have also rolled out their own schedules to address pollution. But concerns have been raised that the capital may shift its sources of pollution to neighboring areas.
Beijing says this won’t happen. “We won’t transfer polluting and high-emission companies and industries to other places, but will eliminate them here,” said Liu Bozheng, a Beijing Commission of Development and Reform official.
Li said the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are expected to unveil 10 policies later this year, including a development plan on promoting clean-energy vehicles, to help fight pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
The joint efforts will boost the development of a low-carbon economy, as high-carbon energy resources are a major cause of air pollution, Yu Jianhua, another official with the capital’s environmental protection bureau, said.
China fell behind the energy saving targets set by its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) and work is needed to keep up with the schedule, said Xie Zhenhua, vice minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission.
The country aims to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 16 percent from the 2010 level by 2015.
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