[Myllyvirta noted that emissions of compounds such as nitrogen oxide in northern China’s industrial heartland ticked up last year as a result of a growth in cement and steel production feeding a government-spurred construction boom.]
By Gerry Shih
 |
|
A woman takes a photo of
the sunset from a pedestrian bridge in Beijing on Sept. 6,
2019. According to Chinese
state media, the average concentration of air
pollutants in Beijing in August was at
the lowest level ever recorded
for that month. (Mark
Schiefelbein/AP)
|
BEIJING
— Thick, gray, soupy air
used to be synonymous with this sprawling city of 22 million.
No longer.
The Swiss firm IQAir AirVisual said Thursday
that the Chinese capital could drop out of the list of the world’s 200 most
polluted cities, with concentrations of small particulates falling to their
lowest level since record-keeping began in 2008.
The data, pulled from sensors installed by
the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and local authorities, confirms what many longtime
residents have reported anecdotally: a significant improvement in the city’s
air in the past two years as the government clamped down on the burning of coal
for heating, shuttered polluting factories and kept heavy trucks outside city
limits.
Average annual concentrations of tiny PM2.5
particles have decreased almost 60 percent since 2010, according to IQAir, an
air purifier manufacturer that issues worldwide air quality reports in
partnership with Greenpeace.
The IQAir AirVisual list in 2018 ranked
Beijing at 122 among the most-polluted cities. Gurugram, India, a city
bordering New Delhi, was ranked as having the world’s worst air quality last
year, followed by another New Delhi neighbor, Ghaziabad, and Faisalabad in
western Pakistan.
Despite the improvement in Beijing, however,
other regions in China appeared to be moving backward as local authorities
sought to stoke growth amid an economic slowdown, said Lauri Myllyvirta of
Greenpeace.
Myllyvirta noted that emissions of compounds
such as nitrogen oxide in northern China’s industrial heartland ticked up last
year as a result of a growth in cement and steel production feeding a
government-spurred construction boom.
“Old-fashioned smokestack industries are
increasing in share and importance” in regions such as Hebei province, he said.
“The pressure to hit GDP targets in the short term is a big part of it.”
A key question now, Myllyvirta said, is
whether Chinese provinces will adhere to a coal consumption ceiling the central
government set for next year in an effort to move the country toward cleaner
energy.
China expects emissions of greenhouse gases
to peak as soon as 2022, years ahead of the original target of “around 2030”
outlined in the Paris climate agreement that numerous countries reached in
2015, a senior Chinese government researcher told Reuters this week.
The Communist Party has been under pressure
for decades from a Chinese public fed up with environmental degradation and has
invested heavily to become a leader in green technologies such as solar energy
and electric vehicles.
At the same, the story of Beijing’s improved
air at the expense of poorer, neighboring industrial regions could eventually
be writ large on a global scale.
Researchers worry that China — ruled by a
Communist Party in which heavy industries such as coal and steel producers
remain influential stakeholders — will simply export polluting industries to
developing markets abroad under its massive Belt and Road Initiative, which
invests in infrastructure projects worldwide.
A report this month by researchers at
Tsinghua University in Beijing tallied up $12 trillion worth of these
infrastructure projects that could cumulatively generate emissions far beyond
the Paris agreement targets and, in the worst-case scenario, lead to an
increase in global warming by 3 degrees Celsius.
For instance, hundreds of coal-fired power
plants will be built in countries from Pakistan to the Philippines under
agreements struck by China.
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