YEARS of efforts have paid off. Beijing now breathes in better quality air. Following President Xi Jinping’s ecological civilization concept, the capital city has defended the blue sky with all its strength.
A UN Environment report on Beijing’s 20 years’ air pollution control process has indicated that no other city on the planet has realized that rapid air pollution reduction. For example, the municipal government has vigorously reduced coal combustion. To optimize the city’s energy structure, the government has made efforts to replace coal with clean energy in the fields of electricity, industry and heating.
At the same time, it has introduced subsidy and price reduction incentives to ensure that residents and enterprises can afford transition from coal to clean energy. Beijing has eliminated pollution caused by burning coal in general. The municipal government also strictly controls vehicle emission pollution by integrated measures covering stringent emission standards, fuel quality standard and on-road restriction, aiming to reduce pollution while also finding a solution to the traffic congestion problem. The government has planned for more extended metro and bus networks to reduce intense use of private cars. The city has always taken the lead in the country to implement the most stringent standards for vehicle emission and oil quality in order to alleviate the pollution from emission. It delineates the low emission areas for motor vehicles. Uptil now, about 2.2 million old motor vehicles have been eliminated and nearly 288,000 new energy vehicles have been put into use. Pollution control measures have been extended to off-road machineries. The municipal government also makes efforts to reduce emission and pollution from industrial development.
To better play out the function of a capital city, Beijing came out with a new catalog of restricted polluting industries, after which it removed more than 3,000 polluting companies and regulated 11,000 companies that violated environmental regulation. Integrated measures are taken to control dust raising in construction activities. In recent years, Beijing has formulated the most comprehensive, systematic and strict air pollution control regulations. With the help of Beijing’s scientific and technological resources, the municipal government carries out scientific research and development to prevent and control air pollution. It has carried out two rounds of PM2.5 source appointment studies, and has built an integrated air quality monitoring network, which covers satellite, in the air and ground monitoring stations, to carry out real-time monitoring of coarse and fine particles up to town level.
(Courtesy: China Daily)
