Regional Pollution Overwhelming Clean Air Efforts

Regional Pollution Overwhelming Clean Air Efforts



   
April 2007 -   Ahead of the 2008 
Beijing Olympic Games, the Beijing Municipality says it will 
employ new measures to raise the number of days of good air 
quality to 67 percent and cut down the emission of sulfur 
dioxide by 10 percent this year. But control of Beijing's air 
quality is not entirely in the city's hands. New research 
shows pollution blows in from other cities in the region. 
The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said today that to 
bring the coal-burning pollutants under control, the city will 
use new energy sources to replace coal for the 1,105 remaining 
coal-fired boilers under 20 tons in the downtown area. 
Coal will be replaced by other sources of power for the 20,000 
families living in one-story houses in the Dongcheng and 
Xicheng districts, and for residents living within the 
Fifth-Ring Road, an area where urban and rural areas overlap. 
Beijing can have blue sky... 
To control vehicle pollutants, authorities are going to 
enforce the IV national emission standard for new vehicles in 
2008. 
In addition, a total of 2,580 old buses and 5,000 taxis and 
other highly polluting vehicles will be taken off the roads, 
the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said. In 2006, 
15,000 polluting taxis and over 3,000 buses were eliminated 
while 4,000 natural gas driven buses were put into operation. 
New measures are being put in place to control industrial 
pollution within the Beijing Municipality. 
The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau says the city's 
five coal-burning power plants will complete their dust 
removal, desulfuration and denitration plans. 
The Capital Steel Plant must cut down production by four 
million tons, while the No II Chemical Plant and the Organic 
Chemical Plant will stop production altogether. 
Since 1988 Beijing has gone through 12 phases of air quality 
control. During the 13th phase in 2007, the city will also 
strive to control dust pollution, protect its ecological 
environment and promote the Green Olympics concept, according 
to the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. 
or not... 
The objectives for the Olympic Games period set in 2004 by the 
Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games, BOCOG, are that 
concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and 
ground-level ozone should meet World Health Organization 
guidelines, and that particle concentrations should be 
comparable to levels in major cities in the developed 
countries. 
But a study of Beijing's air quality just completed by a joint 
team of Chinese and U.S. scientists concludes that emission 
sources far from Beijing exert a significant influence on 
Beijing's air quality. 
To environment newsure a healthy atmosphere for athletes and spectators at 
the 2008 Summer Olympics, scientists at Tsinghua University, 
Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have 
been working with the U.S. Energy Department's Argonne 
National Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 
and the University of Tennessee. 
The team has researched and modeled the local and regional 
contributors to Beijing's air quality, leading to a greater 
understanding of regional air quality management and 
development of new emission control strategies. 
One model by Chinese scientists found that emissions in 
China's third largest city, Tianjin, contributed 10 to 33 
percent of the smog in Beijing. 
The same study found that emissions in Hebei Province 
contributed six to 13 percent to Beijing smog pollution. 
Tianjin Municipality borders Hebei province to the north, 
south, and west - the municipality of Beijing is to the 
northwest. 
"Typical industrial, coal-burning cities within several 
hundred kilometers of Beijing add to the local pollution," 
said David Streets, a senior scientist in Argonne's Decision 
and Information Sciences Division. "In these areas, emission 
controls on stationary sources and vehicles are not as 
stringent as in Beijing, and emissions are high. 
"Air quality in Beijing in the summertime is dictated by 
meteorology and topography," Street explained. Each province's 
contribution varies greatly from day to day, depending on wind 
direction and other meteorological factors. 
"Typically, temperatures are high, humidity is high, wind 
speeds are low, and the surrounding hills restrict venting of 
pollution. Thus, regional pollutants and ozone build up over 
several days until dispersed by wind or removed by rain," he 
said. 
A Beijing smoker takes a break next to an advertisement for 
the 2008 Summer Olympics. 
Steve Page, director of EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning 
and Standards, said, "Over the past several years, Beijing has 
implemented a number of measures to improve air quality, and 
China is now looking at regional approaches to meeting air 
quality standards similar to successful approaches used in the 
U.S. The air quality improvements from their actions will 
benefit everyone." 
The report, "Air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic 
Games," concludes that, even in the event that Beijing 
generates no manmade emissions, levels of ?ne particulate 
matter, PM, and ozone could still be high and could exceed 
healthful levels under unfavorable meteorological conditions. 
"Because the limit of zero emissions cannot be achieved in 
practice, and because China is presently undergoing tremendous 
economic growth, the threat of higher regional emissions and 
higher concentrations of ?ne PM and ozone by 2008 is very 
real," the report states. 
This report has been widely cited by Chinese policy makers, 
including the Beijing mayor, in requesting that the central 
government implement unprecedented regional control programs 
to environment newsure that the air quality goals for 2008 will be met in 
Beijing. 
Click here to read the report, "Air quality during the 2008 
Beijing Olympic Games." 

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