According to latest updates, China’s one of the largest steelmaking province, Hebei along with Beijing has cut its smog emission by 12% in 2018 amid the long crackdown on polluters and campaigns to reduce household coal use.
Both Hebei and Beijing have been on a frontline since 2014 to deal with rising air pollution in order to have clearer skies. Beijing’s emissions of small, hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5 fell 12% to 51 micrograms per cubic meter over the whole of 2018, the local government said on its website on Friday.
However, these are still higher than China’s official air quality standard of 35 micrograms. As per the local government, Beijing was able to meet this standard target of air quality in Jan, Aug, and Sep month of 2018. It said about 656 polluting enterprises were forced to relocate last year, with firms and individuals fined a total of 230 million yuan (USD 33.50 million) for violations, up 23% from last year.
According to industry participants, while about 30% of the improvement in Beijing’s air quality resulted from favourable meteorological conditions, improvement in neighbouring Hebei province also helped. Hebei, China’s biggest steel-producing region, saw PM2.5 emissions fall by 12.5% to an average of 56 micrograms in 2018, preliminary figures from the province’s environment bureau showed last week.
Hebei Province has successfully reduced its coal overcapacity by over 12.9 MnT via public resources trading platform in 2018, said local authorities. About 1.8 million households replaced coal with natural gas and electricity for heating in the ongoing winter season.
In the next three years, Hebei plans to push forward overcapacity reduction with targets to cut 40 MnT of steel overcapacity, 30 MnT of coal, 5 MnT of cement, 10 MnT of coke, and 1.5 million kilowatts of thermal power.
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