Yahoo News 23 Apr 09;
BEIJING (AFP) – Air pollution in China's cities remains very serious, state media on Thursday quoted a minister as saying, amid an ongoing battle to clean up the skies in the world's largest coal-consuming nation.
"There is the potential for serious air pollution incidents to happen, and the air environment situation is extremely severe," environmental protection minister Zhou Shengxian told parliament, the official People's Daily said.
"The difficulties in managing air pollution are intensifying, and environmental regulations as well as protection systems need to be further strengthened," he said Wednesday.
China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal and its appetite for the cheap fuel is growing as its economy expands, according to the Energy Bulletin, a website that monitors global energy supplies.
In 2006, the World Bank said that 16 out of 20 of the world's worst polluted cities were in China.
A recent report by the state Xinhua news agency, citing a survey conducted in November last year in 320 cities, said the average air quality in two out of five Chinese cities ranged from "polluted" to "hazardous".
Zhou said car exhaust fumes also played a large role in air pollution in the country's big and medium-sized cities, the report said.
China's worst air pollution was concentrated in the Yangtze River delta, which includes Shanghai, and the Pearl River delta -- the manufacturing hub in the south of the country that is home to Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
Air pollution in the capital Beijing, nearby Tianjin and surrounding Hebei province is also bad, he said.
But Zhou said there had been improvement in some cities in China, without listing any specific locations.
The China Daily reported at the start of the month that Beijing's air quality was improving as a result of post-Olympics traffic control measures that had seen about 900,000 cars taken off the roads every weekday.
China To Meet 2010 Pollution Targets: Minister
PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;
BEIJING - China is on track to meet its pollution targets by 2010 even though it is still struggling to deal with its coal-dependent energy sector, the country's environment minister has reported to parliament.
By the end of 2010, China aims to cut the emissions of major pollutants by 10 percent compared with 2005 levels.
In a report delivered to China's parliament on Wednesday, minister Zhou Shengxian said annual sulfur dioxide emissions are projected to hit 22 million tons by 2010, 10 percent lower than the 2005 baseline, but with 70 percent of China's energy needs still met by coal, the challenges remain daunting.
"We cannot bring down the high level of atmospheric pollution, which has been brought about by an energy structure dominated by coal," he said in the report posted on the ministry's website.
Zhou noted that pollution continued to blight China's urban areas, with particulate matter and sulfur dioxide emissions still "at a relatively high level," and eastern coastal cities also suffering heavy amounts of ash haze and ozone pollution.
Pollution also remains a serious problem in the Yangtze and Pearl river delta regions, as well as in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area of northern China.
The regions cover only 6.3 percent of China's total land area but are responsible for 40 percent of the country's total coal consumption and produce 50 percent of the its steel, Zhou said.
He said that China would continue to eliminate obsolete steel smelters, power plants and paper mills over the course of 2009, and was currently drawing up new emission reduction targets for the 2011-2015 period.
(Editing by Ken Wills)
