Beijing air quality improved in 2015, says China

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An improvement in Beijing’s air quality last year over 2014 may have had more to do with weather patterns than with a decline in emissions, environmental experts say.

The Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said the average concentration of PM2.5 particles — used as a proxy for measuring air quality — at 81 micrograms per cubic metre, was down 6 per cent from 2014’s average of nearly 86 micrograms and 10 per cent from 90 in 2013.

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The World Health Organisation’s standard for safe air is an annual mean of 10 micrograms.

The bureau said Beijing’s “number of days of most serious PM2.5 pollution is falling each year” but environmental experts pointed out that the city had declared its first two pollution red alerts — the highest level of danger — in December. A red alert triggers the closure of schools, restrictions on factory production and the removal of half the city’s vehicles from the roads. 

Ma Jun, an environmental campaigner and head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the capital’s air quality appeared to improve in the first 10 months of 2015 compared with the same period the previous year.

“But I’m not sure whether that’s the result of fewer emissions,” he said, noting that the deterioration in air quality in the final two months of the year “was due to wind and humidity”.

“Also Beijing’s air quality is affected more by that of nearby regions than before,” he added.

Dong Liansai, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia, said: “Air quality is far from an issue which affects only Beijing.

“Northeastern China, the central China plain, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and even southwestern cities such as Chengdu are severely affected by smog, and a number of red alerts have been in place in cities other than just Beijing.”

Noxious air in many parts of China has become a political liability for the government, which is setting targets and adopting policies aimed at reducing industrial and vehicle emissions in the most populous centres.
But cities such as Shanghai, for example, have moved factories away to surrounding areas only to find pollutants drifting back and worsening air quality.

Greenpeace announced in October that PM2.5 levels for China had dropped in the first three quarters of last year, but nearly 80 per cent of the 367 cities measured “still greatly exceed both national and international air quality standards”.

Measures to curb pollution are also being stepped up in the Indian capital, which has emerged as one of the world’s most polluted cities. In the first trial of its kind in a decade, New Delhi will allow cars with odd number plates to be driven only on odd dates of the month, and even numbers on even dates during the first two weeks of 2016.