Central heat not worth environmental cost
Print Edition
A COLLEAGUE recently returned from a trip to Beijing and shared his observations about the city’s air pollution.
The city was hit by a severe smog during his stay there, with visibility reduced to no more than 30 meters. Beijing residents cracked jokes that those compelled to go outdoors despite such poor air quality were ju zhong xi du, a term to describe people gathering to take illicit drugs, but within this context meaning “inhaling toxic air together.”
Such macabre humor underlines the sad resignation among many Beijingers when it comes to the frequent onslaughts of smog and outrageous air quality, now a scourge in much of urban China.
My colleague said a routine daily practice during his Beijing sojourn was to replace the cleansing filters inside his face mask, which were as black as charcoal after a full day’s use. As he held forth, I could not but feel a vicarious fear of respiratory diseases, or worse.
Apart from car exhausts, it is often pointed out that central heating is chiefly to blame for the seasonal smog in winter, as homes and offices in northern China are heated by burning fossil fuels, mainly coal.
Given increasingly heightened public concerns about smog and its health consequences, the conflict between the need for warmth and environmental protection has never been greater.
Some experts are already calling for less polluting ways of supplying heat in northern China. Their calls came, paradoxically, amid an ongoing debate about a proposal to adopt central heating in southern China.
Anachronism?
People arguing in favor of the proposal tend to cite the region’s humidly frigid winter. At present, only provinces north of the officially-drawn Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River Line are entitled to central heating, while those south of it have to find other sources of heat.
This line was drawn decades ago, when energy resources were in short supply. Many in southern Chinese are now arguing that the line is an anachronism and has to move southward to adapt to the growing popular demand for climate-controlled comfort.
Without the benefit of central heating, the unheated homes of many families in southern China feel like refrigerators in winter. At the very least, they are much less inviting than those in the country’s north — where homes are so warm that it suffices to wear only a shirt.
I once attended a wedding banquet in rural Shanghai in the middle of winter. Guests consisted of locals and out-of-towners. The temperature was 4 degrees below zero. Unlike the resourceful locals, who slipped heat-generating pads underneath their sweaters, several people from northeastern China came totally unprepared and literally shivered throughout the banquet, complaining about the chilly weather as well as the lack of central heating in Shanghai.
Such complaints, however, should not be used to justify pleas for what would almost certainly exacerbate the already worsening airborne pollution.
Shanghai may have been spared — for now — the heavy smog that besets Beijing and other parts of northern China. But the environmental consequences of central heating, should it be adopted on a massive scale, can only be anticipated.
In their yearning for comfort, too many people care too much about today — while paying scant attention to tomorrow. Luckily, such short-sightedness isn’t shared by our policy makers as the debate about providing central heating in southern China has been officially put to rest.
In an apparent response to popular discussions, national authorities said recently that China’s south isn’t suited for central heating because of its climate, building structures, energy efficiency, costs and other factors.
Instead, they suggest that people turn to alternative sources of heat supply such as air conditioners or floor heating systems.
A more valid and cost-effective option than central heating, as many have noted, is to issue heating allowances, so that poor households will not have to worry so much about their electricity bills.
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