Authors: Xueyu Li, Fuqiang Yang
The blog is only available in Chinese. For the Chinese version, please click the "中文" button in the upper right-hand corner. The main points are summarized below:
• Statistical data on China's coal consumption, national average number of smoggy days per year, and average PM2.5 pollution was analyzed for China’s first 74 cities to implement the new air quality standards. This article showed a direct correlation between the level of coal consumption and the average concentration of PM2.5 and the annual smoggy days in China.
• To tackle air pollution, we need both a systematic strategy and specific measures to deal with different pollutants. This article suggests capping the average annual ‘base load’ of pollutants. This means capping pollutant emissions from the industrial sector, transportation, biomass, and sources of dust, to reduce the annual average base-level concentration of pollutants. To control secondary sources of PM2.5, the article also suggests including pollutant indicators for ammonia, VOCs, and particulate matter in the 13th Five-year plan for pollution control. In addition, this article emphasizes the importance of cutting down on dispersed coal use, a major contributor of winter peak pollution load. Through strengthened smog governance efforts in the winter months, peak pollution levels can lowered.
• Dispersed coal use is key source of air pollution and represents a critical obstacle in the trend of cleaner coal use in China. Managing dispersed coal use, unfortunately, has proven to be a difficult task, given the scope and fluidity of dispersed coal transactions across regions, the limitations of local governments, insufficient and imperfect subsidy policies, the high cost of replacement alternatives, and the immaturity of key technologies. The article points out that we need a clear definition of dispersed coal and deep investigation of regional dispersed coal use. Only with reliable and thorough data of the consumption and distribution of dispersed coal use can we provide strong scientific planning recommendation to policy makers.
