Fines in future for heavy polluters
- Source: Global Times
- [08:20 April 20 2011]
- Comments
A new Beijing plan may soon make traditional hutong coal stoves and high-polluting vehicles things of the past, as well as fining the capital's heavier polluters.
The Beijing Municipal Clean Air Action Plan (2011-2015), released Tuesday by the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (BMEPB), said the city aims to raise the amount of days per year with "excellent" and "good" air quality to 80 percent.
Places that produce heavy air pollution will be charged a fee, according to the plan. For example, some construction sites will have to pay a "floating dust fee," and high-pollution industries will pay for any sulfur dioxide produced, according to bureau supervision team chief Wang Bin Tuesday.
The city also plans to launch a pilot program of floating dust control in districts including Dongcheng and Xicheng within the year.
Some 50,000 aging motor vehicles with heavy pollution will be removed from the roads by year's end, as part of the plan to remove 450,000 vehicles total over the next five years. Beijing currently has around 1.8 million heavy-polluting motor vehicles, according to a Xinhua report Tuesday.
Beijing's six urban districts will update their remaining coal-fired boilers and stoves, refurbishing them with equipment that uses clean energy, said Zhuang Zhidong, deputy head of BMEPB.
"Urban districts will bid farewell to coal burning," said Zhuang, adding that three of the four thermal power plants in the city will also undergo clean energy renovations.
Furthermore, Beijing will implement stricter standards for vehicle exhaust, and the city plans to render obsolete 400,000 vehicles that will fail to meet the new emissions cap, said Zhuang.
Beijing, host city of the 2008 Olympics, has made continuous efforts to alleviate its air pollution problems. Its sulfur dioxide concentration, an important air quality index, was down 36 percent in 2010 from 2005, according to a BMEPB document.
Still, air quality in Beijing "lags behind many local and foreign cities," due to its huge number of vehicles and growing energy consumption, the document said.
Global Times - Xinhua
