The national environmental watchdog has declared that boosting efforts to cut air pollution in northern China, especially winter smog from the burning of coal, is a mission for this year.
Burning coal for winter heating has been listed as one of the primary causes of air pollution, Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said on Monday at the annual meeting on environmental protection in Beijing.“As much as 60 percent of smog content is caused by coal burning in the starting phase of each smog”, said Fang Li, an official with Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau. Therefore, Beijing has declared that it will wipe out coal use in its most rural areas by 2020.
To start with, Beijing will replace coal-fired heating stoves with those powered by electricity or gas in 400 villages this year, before taking the campaign to the districts of Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan by 2017,said Guo Zihua, a municipal rural development official. Beijing's downtown districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng eliminated coal burning last year, officials said.
The capital and other places in northern China experienced several smog alerts in November and December, when peak readings were many times higher than the national safety level. Obviously, the situation is deteriorating, and will become a norm. So the government came up with a “smog subsidy (津贴)” for those who work outdoors, and 95 percent of the respondents to a survey support it.
The Trade Union in Zhengzhou City surveyed subscribers to its official WeChat account and found that 88 percent of nearly 400 respondents said priority should be given to outdoor workers on smoggy days But 9 percent said air pollution affects everyone so it would be unfair to only address the concerns of people who work outdoors.
Over half of the respondents think the extra subsidy, if applied, could come in the form of protective tools or cash. Twenty-two percent said money is the easiest way. To finance the proposed subsidy, 53 percent think the government and companies should jointly pay the bill, while 44 percent said central and regional governments should be responsible.
