Beijing issues new measures aimed at curbing air pollution

Vehicles past apartment blocks during rush hour in Beijing July 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

BEIJING | Mon Sep 2, 2013 5:48am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing unveiled yet another slew of measures on Monday to curb a choking pollution problem, including limiting the number of new vehicles on the roads and closing or upgrading the facilities of 1,200 companies.

China's smoggy capital has tried everything from shutting factories to a massive subway building program as it battles a severe air pollution problem, but with little apparent effect.

The latest measures are part of a broader plan to reduce the Chinese capital's density of harmful particles in the air by at least 25 percent by 2017.

"It's a declaration of war against PM 2.5," the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said in a statement on its website, referring to tiny particles in the air that pose the greatest risk to human health.

"The city will work relentlessly to improve air quality."

The Chinese government has been increasingly alarmed by social unrest caused by environmental disasters and threats to public health, often the result of breakneck industrial expansion and mass migration to new cities.

In the newly unveiled measures, Beijing will place tougher restrictions on the number of new vehicles allowed on the roads each year, curbing annual growth to nearly zero.

The government aims to cap the number of vehicles in the city at six million by the end of 2017, compared with 5.35 million by the end of July, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Beijing also aims to reduce total vehicle fuel consumption by at least 5 percent from 2012, by promoting the sale of new energy and small vehicles, and encouraging people to drive less frequently, Xinhua said.

Beijing will also restrict the number of vehicles allowed in specific areas during certain times of the day, starting in 2014, it added.

"In order to curb vehicle emissions, we have to introduce a market mechanism to reduce intensity of vehicle use," Xinhua quoted city environmental official Li Kunsheng as saying.

Beijing, along with other three cities - Shanghai, Guangzhou and Guiyang - is already subject to new car sales restrictions, while eight more cities plan to follow suit, China's automobile association said in July.

CARMAKERS TURN TO OTHER CITIES

Carmakers including Volkswagen AG, General Motors Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Ford Motor Co have all said they are shifting their attention to China's lower-tier cities, as growth in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai starts to stagnate.

Other measures to be introduced to clean up Beijing's air included ordering 1,200 polluting companies to upgrade or close some or all their facilities in the years to 2016, Xinhua added.

"In regions or industries that fail to meet air pollution reduction targets, no new projects that emit major air pollutants will be given regulatory approval as of 2013," it said.

"Companies who break environmental laws will be banned from receiving bank loans, fund-raising through initial public offerings and value-added tax breaks starting this year."

Smoke from factories and heating plants, winds from the Gobi Desert and fumes from millions of vehicles can combine to blanket the city in a pungent shroud for days. English-speaking residents sometimes call the city "Greyjing" or "Beige-jing".

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee, and Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada in SHANGHAI)

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World Bank targets air pollution in climate battle

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

OSLO | Tue Sep 3, 2013 3:01pm EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Tuesday it was planning "aggressive action" to help developing nations cut emissions of soot and other air pollutants blamed for causing climate change, in a shift also meant to protect human health and aid crop growth.

Of its funding to poor nations, almost 8 percent - $18 billion from 2007-12 - goes to sectors such as energy, farming, waste and transport that have a potential to cut emissions, a bank report said.

The bank said it would shift policy to insist that such projects in future - it did not predict levels of funding - included a component to curb air pollution.

"We will try to turn it (the funding) into aggressive action" to cut the pollutants, Rachel Kyte, vice president of sustainable development at the World Bank, told Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting a 38-nation group in Oslo looking at ways to cut short-term air pollution.

"Anything that delays the pace at which global warming is arriving buys time for our clients, the poor countries in the world," Kyte said.

The bank would look for new ways to help, for instance, reduce pollution from public transport, curb methane emissions from rice irrigation, and improve the efficiency of high-polluting cooking stoves and brick kilns.

Soot comes from sources ranging from wood-burning cooking stoves to diesel engines. Methane comes from decomposition of plant and animal matter and from farming, for instance from the digestive tracts of cattle and sheep.

Environment ministers at the meeting in Oslo of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, set up 18 months ago in Washington as a new front in combating climate change, also outlined projects to cut air pollution in areas from forestry to gas flaring.

FIRST AID

The focus on short-lived air pollutants is meant to complement efforts to cut carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities that a U.N. panel of climate scientists says is the main cause of global warming.

In a statement, members of the coalition said that cutting the short-term pollutants could reduce global warming by up to about 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) by 2040-50.

That would help achieve a goal, set by almost 200 nations in 2010, of limiting a rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avoid more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

And cutting short-lived pollutants would also protect human health - six million people worldwide die early every year from air pollution, it said.

"First aid for the climate can also be first aid for people's health," Norwegian Environment Minister Baard Vegar Soljhell said.

Reducing pollutants "can also help rural economies, with current estimates showing the potential to save about 50 million tonnes (45.359 million metric tons) of crops each year", the statement said. Pollution poisons plants and can block sunlight, stunting growth.

The coalition statement did not refer to an academic study last month that suggested the temperature benefits of an assault on the short-lived pollutants might be far less, only 0.16 degree Celsius (0.3F) by 2050.

Drew Shindell of NASA, the head scientific advisor to the coalition, said that report wrongly assumed that air pollution would fall with economic growth. "That doesn't automatically happen," he said.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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