Posts tagged ‘air pollution’

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04/12/2014

End of the road for Delhi’s old cars as India battles smog | Reuters

The National Green Tribunal has banned all vehicles older than 15 years from the streets of the capital, New Delhi, in a bid to clean up air that one prominent study this year found to be the world’s dirtiest.

Heavy traffic moves along a busy road during a power-cut at the traffic light junctions in New Delhi July 31, 2012. REUTERS/B Mathur/Files

The ruling hits up to a third of the 8.4 million motorbikes, trucks, cars and auto-rickshaws that ply the traffic-choked roads of Delhi and its surrounding areas, transport officials estimate.

Cities across the world are ordering older vehicles off the road or restricting private car use to tackle growing air pollution. Mexico City introduced a ban on older vehicles driving on Saturdays this year, while in March, France briefly enforced the most drastic traffic curbs in 20 years.

“It is undisputed and in fact unquestionable that the air pollution of … Delhi is getting worse with each passing day,” the National Green Tribunal ruled in a judgment last week banning older vehicles from city streets.

Vehicular emissions are the cause of close to three-quarters of Delhi’s air pollution, the Delhi government estimates, and a World Health Organization study of 1,600 cities released in May found India’s capital had the world’s dirtiest air. India rejected the report.

The ban in Delhi lacks incentives to encourage drivers to trade in their older vehicles but eventually could boost sales for carmakers like Maruti Suzuki India and Tata Motors, as the capital accounts for 17 percent of India’s new car sales, said IHS automotive analyst Puneet Gupta.

via End of the road for Delhi’s old cars as India battles smog | Reuters.

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28/11/2014

China Soon to Have Almost as Many Drivers as U.S. Has People – China Real Time Report – WSJ

China will soon have nearly as many drivers as the U.S. has people.

As of this week, the number of Chinese motor-vehicle drivers was poised to break past 300 million people, according to the country’s top law-enforcement agency, including 244 million licensed passenger-car drivers. The U.S., by comparison, has about 319 million men, women and children, and nearly 212 million licensed drivers.

Meanwhile, China has 154 million private autos, next only to the U.S., said the ministry. The U.S. government puts the number of cars and trucks there at around 240 million, suggesting China still has a ways to go before it can fill parking lots the way Americans do.

The numbers – a result of China’s wealth accumulation over the past decade as well as the rise a domestic car-manufacturing base – have all kinds of implications for the world’s No. 2 economy. The rise in the ranks of drivers could be good news for an industry facing slowing growth and overcapacity, though it also complicated Beijing’s efforts to wrap its arms around the country’s massive pollution problems.

First, the details: Chinese drivers are increasingly female, both older and younger, and new to the streets.

via China Soon to Have Almost as Many Drivers as U.S. Has People – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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29/10/2014

Pollution in Delhi Prompts U.S. Embassy Warning – India Real Time – WSJ

If you have children in New Delhi, you might not want to let them play outside today. The U.S. Embassy in the Indian capital said air quality – as measured at a monitoring station in the embassy compound – had reached “very unhealthy” levels on Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday at 10 a.m., the embassy said its air-quality index was 255 – a measure based on the amount of fine particulate, or PM 2.5, in the air. Such small particulates can enter the lungs and blood stream. They have been linked to severe health problems such as lung cancer.

The U.S. Embassy’s website said that an air-quality index reading between 201 and 300 can cause “significant aggravation of heart or lung disease” and a “significant increase in respiratory effects in general population.”

“Older adults and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors,” it said. “Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.”

The message though hadn’t got through to the American Embassy School in Delhi on Wednesday morning. Kailash Sharma, a staff member at the school, which is located across the road from the embassy, said by telephone that “kids were playing outside.”

The U.S. embassy in Beijing, China, also monitors air pollution.

Delhi’s air quality often deteriorates in winter, particularly in the days after the festival of Diwali when residue from fireworks displays adds to pollution levels.

India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences on Wednesday said its air-quality index was 121, a level described as “poor.”

via Pollution in Delhi Prompts U.S. Embassy Warning – India Real Time – WSJ.

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12/09/2014

When China Cleans Its Air, Health-Care Costs Plummet – Businessweek

Beijing residents checking the hourly air-quality index online and strapping air-pollution facemasks on their children may miss the halcyon days just before the 2008 Olympics, when the city temporarily cleaned up its skies (at least, relatively speaking). But not every city in China has seen the air grow darker over the past half decade.

Unidentified emissions from a coal-fired power plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi, China, in 2007

The northern city of Taiyuan, capital of coal-rich Shanxi province, has launched several measures to reduce coal burning and emissions. Although its skies are hardly clear, they are clearer. And that has made a noticeable difference in health outcomes and health-care costs, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Health.

Over the past decade, Taiyuan has closed several large coal-burning power plants and increased environmental monitoring of its other factories—effectively lowering the average concentration of PM 10 (particulate matter 10 micrometers in diameter or less). As a result, average PM 10 concentrations dropped more than 50 percent from 2001 to 2010.

The economic costs associated with pollution—including health-care expenses, loss of labor productivity, and premature death—correspondingly dropped more than 50 percent, according to estimates by the researchers. Specifically, the researchers correlated reduced air pollution over the course of a decade with 141,457 fewer hospital or doctor visits, 31,810 fewer hospital stays, 969 fewer trips to the emergency room, 951 fewer cases of bronchitis, and 2,810 fewer premature deaths.

via When China Cleans Its Air, Health-Care Costs Plummet – Businessweek.

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16/05/2014

China to build new hi-tech power network to help fight pollution | South China Morning Post

China will build the world’s largest high-power electricity transmission network as part of the country’s efforts to battle smog and pollution.

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The State Grid Corporation of China – the world’s largest state-owned utilities company – said on its website that the central government would soon approve plans for the construction of 12 power lines connecting the energy-rich interior with heavily industrialised coastal areas. The initial investment is estimated to be at least 210 billion yuan (HK$264 billion).

The 12 projects include eight ultra-high-voltage (UHV) lines, which offer distinct advantages over conventional power lines by transmitting electricity over significantly longer distances with far greater efficiency. Energy losses from UHV power lines are five to six times lower than the conventional ones, studies show.

Despite some concerns about the project – especially the vulnerability of such a broad network to system-wide failures – the emerging technology is being hailed as an ultimately far cleaner, more efficient way to deliver electricity across the country.

State Grid claims UHV power lines can reduce the density of PM2.5 smog particles, which are considered most dangerous to human health, by 4-5 per cent in central and eastern regions and cut coal consumption by 200 million tonnes a year.

via China to build new hi-tech power network to help fight pollution | South China Morning Post.

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08/05/2014

A Silver Lining in Beijing Smog: Soaring Pollution Penalty Revenues – Businessweek

Looking for a silver lining in Beijing’s gray smog? The city’s environmental protection bureau says fees collected from polluters are soaring, already totaling 88 million yuan ($14 million) this year. That’s way up from 8.34 million yuan in penalties levied over the same period last year, according to the China Daily.

Tiananmen Square during severe pollution on Feb. 25 in Beijing

The surge in penalties isn’t because the smog’s been worse. In January, the fines went up more than 10-fold for major pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ammonia nitrogen.

The higher fees are already helping encourage companies to retire some of their worst habits. “Many companies used to ignore the old discharge fee because it was simply too insignificant,” said Zhong Chonglei, head of the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Team, at a press conference on May 6. “The increased fee has made many companies realize the importance of emission reduction.”

via A Silver Lining in Beijing Smog: Soaring Pollution Penalty Revenues – Businessweek.

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26/04/2014

China’s Pollution Police Are Watching – Businessweek

At 7 a.m. on a recent March morning, Xu Xiaoshun hops behind the wheel and turns the key. His Chang’an Leopard truck puffs out some black smoke and shivers to life as Xu begins his daily gamble. Every morning, including weekends, he leaves the one-room apartment he shares with his wife, drives almost 10 kilometers (six miles) to a market, picks up construction materials, and delivers them to job sites in and around Hangzhou, a city of 8.8 million. Often, his route takes him through areas of the city where his truck is banned because of its dirty emissions. “This truck isn’t allowed on some roads,” Xu says as he steps on the gas. “But when an order comes, I must take a risk.”

China's Pollution Police Are Watching

As air pollution in China becomes a national crisis—only three of the 74 cities monitored last year had acceptable air quality, according to a March report from the Ministry of Environmental Protection—Hangzhou and other cities have declared war on dirty cars and trucks. High-emission vehicles such as Xu’s must display yellow stickers on their windshields. (Cleaner cars are marked with green ones.) In Hangzhou, yellow-tagged cars and trucks are banned from the city’s main areas from 6 a.m. to midnight.

About 13 percent of China’s 224 million vehicles had yellow labels as of 2012, but they accounted for more than half of carbon monoxide emissions and more than 80 percent of airborne particulates, government statistics show. Cities across the nation must meet a national goal of forcing all yellow-label vehicles off the roads by 2017. In Hengshui, one of China’s most polluted cities, officials have mandated a phaseout of diesel-powered vehicles more than nine years old, triggering grumblings from owners in online forums.

via China’s Pollution Police Are Watching – Businessweek.

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21/03/2014

India’s Diesel Fuel Subsidy Breeds Toxic Air Pollution – Businessweek

Molecular biologist George Easow’s move to India to start a clinical diagnostics business lasted just three weeks before he decided to give up and return to the U.K. Within days of the family’s move to New Delhi, his 7-month-old daughter, Fiona, was wheezing and gasping for air because of smog. “She could hardly breathe,” says her father.

India's Diesel Cars Are Proving Lethal

Fiona was kept indoors and put on medication. Nothing worked. “We had to make a call,” Easow says, adding that her symptoms disappeared once they were back in the U.K. and haven’t returned. For the 16.8 million residents of India’s capital, the wheezing continues. The bad news is, it’s going to get worse.

Cities across India suffer from some of the poorest air quality in the world. The problem is so severe that it’s costing the country 1.1 trillion rupees ($18 billion) annually in the shortened life spans of productive members of the urban population, according to a June World Bank report.

STORY: Who Has Dirtier Air: China or India?

While Beijing and Shanghai air pollution caused by coal-burning factories are well known, Delhi residents suffer even more by some measures, though the main source of the smog is cars and trucks running on cheap diesel. Indian government subsidies for the fuel add up to $15 billion a year. Farmers and truckers, both big voting blocs, rely on cheap diesel.

India’s diesel-powered vehicles pump out exhaust gases with 10 times the carcinogenic particles found in gasoline exhaust. The result: Delhi’s air on average last year was laced with double the toxic particles per cubic meter reported in Beijing, leading to respiratory diseases, lung cancer, and heart attacks. “I have no doubt, 100 percent, that diesel exhaust is contributing to a rise in asthma, respiratory illnesses, and hospitalizations,” says Dr. T.K. Joshi, director of Delhi’s Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at Maulana Azad Medical College.

via India’s Diesel Fuel Subsidy Breeds Toxic Air Pollution – Businessweek.

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05/03/2014

* China to ‘declare war’ on pollution, premier says | Reuters

China is to “declare war” on pollution, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday at the opening of the annual meeting of parliament, with the government unveiling detailed measures to tackle what has become a hot-button social issue.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gives an address during a news conference with French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (not pictured) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 6, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mark Ralston/Pool

It is not uncommon for air pollution in parts of China to breach levels considered by some experts to be hazardous. That has drawn much public ire and is a worry for the government, which fears any discontent that might compromise stability.

“We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty,” Li told the almost 3,000 delegates to the country’s largely rubber-stamp legislature in a wide-ranging address carried live on state television.

Curbing pollution has become a key part of efforts to upgrade the economy, shift the focus away from heavy industry and tackle the perennial problem of overcapacity, with Li describing smog as “nature’s red-light warning against inefficient and blind development”.

“This is an acknowledgement at the highest level that there is a crisis,” said Craig Hart, expert on Chinese environmental policy and associate professor at China’s Renmin University.

“Their approach is going to have to be pro-economy. I think they will pump money into upgrading plants. This could be another green stimulus although it is not being packaged that way.”

China has published a series of policies and plans aimed at addressing environmental problems but it has long struggled to bring big polluting industries and growth-obsessed local governments to heel.

Li said efforts would focus first on reducing hazardous particulate matter known as PM 2.5 and PM 10 and would also be aimed at eliminating outdated energy producers and industrial plants, the source of much air pollution.

China will cut outdated steel production capacity by a total of 27 million tonnes this year, slash cement production by 42 million tonnes, and also shut down 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces across the country, Li said.

The 27 million tonnes of steel, equivalent to Italy’s production capacity, amounts to less than 2.5 percent of China’s total, and industry officials have warned that plants with another 30 million tonnes of annual output went into construction last year.

The targeted cement closures amount to less than 2 percent of last year’s total production.

The battle against pollution will also be waged via reforms in energy pricing to boost non-fossil fuel power. Li promised change in “the way energy is consumed and produced” through the development of nuclear and renewables, the deployment of smart power transmission grids, and the promotion of green and low-carbon technology.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s economic planner, said in its report that new guidelines would be issued on relocating key industries away from urban centers to help tackle smog.

via China to ‘declare war’ on pollution, premier says | Reuters.

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31/01/2014

Environment: Browner, but greener | The Economist

China stands out for its greenness in a new environmental ranking

CHINA is the world’s biggest polluter, so it is no surprise that it fares poorly on some measures of pollution in a new global index of environmental performance. The shock is that it also stands out for its world-beating greenness in other areas on the same index.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a joint product of America’s Yale and Columbia universities, is the latest volume in a long-running biennial ranking of 178 countries on a variety of measures of environmental performance. New this year are assessments of performance in waste-water treatment and combating climate change, as well as the clever use of satellite data (to track trends in forestry and air pollution) in order to top up traditional computer modelling and official data.

The report’s conclusions are more cheerful than most green report cards. The experts believe countries are doing well in improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and in bringing down child mortality. However, the global trends are worrying in other areas like fisheries, wastewater treatment and air quality. Overall, Switzerland came out top. Somalia came last. China was 118th, a middling ranking that beats India (155th) but falls well below South Africa (72nd), Russia (73rd) and Brazil (77th).

However, that average masks a huge divergence in China’s performance in two areas. Using satellite data, the boffins worked out, for the first time, what global exposures were to fine particulate matter (known as PM2.5) from 2000 to 2012. China ranked at the bottom on air pollution, with nearly all of its population exposed to levels of PM2.5 pollution deemed unhealthy by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Though less frequently criticised than Beijing, Delhi’s air is also terrible—but China as a whole fares worse. In 2012 the average human exposure to PM2.5 for all of China was 48 micrograms per cubic metre, but the national figure for India was only 32 units (the WHO says anything above 10 units is unhealthy).

The surprise is that China has done very well on carbon. The experts calculate that, unusually among big emerging economies, it slowed the rate at which its greenhouse-gas emissions have grown in the past decade. That is partly a natural result of its development, which has led to investment in better technology and cleaner industries, but it is also thanks to policies to improve efficiency and boost renewable energy.

Environmentalists the world over can breathe a little easier knowing that the biggest global polluter has started to slow the rise in its greenhouse-gas emissions and may one day even reduce them. If only China’s urban residents could breathe a little easier, too.

via Environment: Browner, but greener | The Economist.

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