Watchdog: 31% of Beijing’s smog is from vehicles
Print Edition
ABOUT a third of the air pollution in China’s smog-hit capital comes from outside the city, according to a pollution watchdog.
Chen Tian, chief of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, said between 28 and 36 percent of hazardous particles known as PM2.5 came from surrounding provinces such as Hebei, home to seven of China’s 10 most polluted cities in 2013, according to official data.
The central government has identified the heavily industrialized Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin region as one of the main fronts in its war against pollution, and it is under pressure to cut coal consumption and industrial capacity.
Decades of unrestrained growth have hit China’s environment hard and Beijing’s often choking air has become a symbol of the pollution crisis.
Chen said that of the smog generated in Beijing, 31 percent came from vehicles, 22.4 percent from coal burning and 18.1 percent from industry, according to China Environmental News, a publication of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Wang Junling, vice head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Research Institute, said that while pollution from outside Beijing was a main component of its smog, the rapid growth of the city’s population, energy use and economic output were also to blame.
He told China Environmental News last month that from 1998 to 2012, Beijing’s economic output rose 6.5 times and vehicle numbers rose 2.8 times. In the same period, the population soared 66 percent and energy consumption rose 90 percent.
The city plans to cut coal consumption by 13 million tons by 2017 — down from about 23 million tons in 2013.
Hebei used 280 million tons of coal last year and aims to cut the total by 40 million tons over the same period.
Beijing also plans to limit the number of cars on its roads to 5.6 million this year, with numbers allowed to rise to 6 million by 2017. It is also trying to enforce a ban on old vehicles.
The city government said in a report last week that it failed to meet national standards in four of six major pollutants in 2013. It said its PM2.5 concentrations stood at a daily average of 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter — 156 percent higher than the national standard of 35mg.
In 2013, PM2.5 levels monitored by authorities in 74 of China’s cities stood at an average of 72mg.
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