City may be seeing the last of its smogs, as benign weather and controls on coal burning and vehicle exhausts take effect
Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk 2 Feb 11;
Notoriously smoggy Beijing is set to start the Chinese new year at midnight with the city's first uninterrupted month of blue skies in a decade.
Benign weather and government controls on coal burning and vehicle exhausts cut pollution to more than half the normal levels in January, raising hopes the worst of the haze may finally be drawing to an end.
In an interview with the Guardian, Du Shaozhong, the deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Administration, which has been much criticised over the years, was in an ebullient mood.
"This is the best month we've had in terms of air quality since 1998," he said. "In terms of environmental quality, we are on the way. We are climbing every day and trying to improve air quality."
He acknowledged that the air quality over the past month had benefited from meteorological conditions – strong winds and cold fronts – but said the improvement was far from a one-off.
Last year, the air pollution index was below 100 – the city's standard – for more than three out of every four days. In 1998, it was just one out of four.
"The comparison is astonishing. These figures tell a positive, long-term story," Du said.
He illustrated the challenge with data on the four main sources: industry and power plants that burn 30 million tons of coal each year, traffic that has increased from 1 million to 4.8 million vehicles since 1998, and Beijing's construction sites that cover an area of 100 million sq m – three times greater than all the building plots in Europe.
To modify the impact of a fast growing and increasingly affluent population, Beijing has retrofitted the city's five coal fired power plants and 60,000 boilers with desulpherisation scrubbers. Home heating has been switched to gas. As a result, coal consumption in Beijing has been stable for 12 years.
Along with a relocation of dirty factories ahead of the 2008 Olympics, this has contributed to a sharp fall in sulphur dioxide emissions, which failed to meet standards for only three days last winter, compared with 106 days in 1998.
Road traffic is now the priority. Beijing has steadily raised exhaust emission controls and will adopt the world-leading Euro5 standard next year, Du said. Over the past five years, 300,000 of the highest polluting vehicles have been phased out. From last month, the city also imposed limits of new registrations, which should slow the grow of traffic.
Beijing still has a long way to go to reach the air quality of cities in developed nations. Its standards do not currently include important pollutants like ozone and small particulates, known as PM2.5.
In the future, Du said more attention would be placed on cutting PM2.5 – most of which comes from cars – which poses a major health risk because it can enter the lungs and blood stream, while bigger PM10 particulates from industry tend to get stuck in nasal passages. The central government is currently considering whether to add PM2.5 to the national standards.
The improvements do not mean the smog has disappeared for good. Less than three months ago, the haze was so thick that it obscured entire skyscrapers. According to the US embassy's monitoring station, the air pollution index was off the scale at 500, prompting an unusual reading of 'crazy bad'. The dry clear conditions also have an environmental downside – Beiing is suffering from a severe drought. Also, in many cases, the pollution has moved rather than disappeared, migrating along with dirty industry to poorer regions of China.
Many residents will remain sceptical. But the steady improvement in the capital's air quality, particularly in the past month, has prompted foreign observers to express amazement at the unusually clear skies.
The LivefromBeijing blog, which has tracked the ups and downs of the city's air for several years, noted the "incredible streak of consecutive blue sky days" has now passed 40.
"What we are experiencing is not merely some minor or subtle improvement. Beijing's air pollution levels over the past month have been less than half of what they usually are this time of year. This is remarkable," noted the author David Vance Wagner.
The Asia Society, which has runs daily comparisons of pictures and data on the air in Beijing and New York, recently pointed out the change in glowing terms:
"This week has been by far the cleanest in terms of both blue-ness and air quality stable performance. Even New York looked less impressive."
The run of clear days is likely to get its biggest test tonight, when the residents of Beijing usher in the year of the rabbit with a celebratory firestorm of rockets, bangers and firecrackers. The debris from tens of millions of explosives will rain down from the skies, pushing up the air pollution index.
"It's very bad for the community and the environment," said Du. "People need to use fireworks more reasonably. We still have problems with pollution control."
