China pollution falls despite smog red alerts, says Greenpeace

Average levels of the most harmful fine-particle pollution, PM 2.5, fell by 10 per cent in China last year, the environmental group Greenpeace said, although 80 per cent of 366 major cities still fail to meet national air quality standards.

The report seems to fly in the face of anecdotal evidence. Last year, China issued its first smog red alert and closed schools, and there was serious criticism of the government for not doing enough to combat smog.

On the day after the report was issued, visibility was appalling in the capital Beijing.

The reading on the air quality app was “moderately polluted”, with levels of the most harmful micro-particle pollutants, Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5, running at 147µg /m3, which is more than five times the 25 µg /m3 recommended by the European Union.

“Despite Beijing’s choking winter of red alerts, data from 2015 clearly shows a continued positive trend in Beijing and across the country. However, air quality across China is still a major health hazard,” said Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Dong Liansai.

The lobby group said steps must be taken to clean the air in China and said that the next government economic policy blueprint, the Five Year Plan, must tackle air pollution via a nationwide cap on the consumption of coal, China’s number one source of air pollutants.

Rampant growth

Choking air pollution has come after decades of rampant growth and the transformation of China into the world’s second largest economy.

Sure enough, the fourth quarter data for Beijing and other areas of northern China show that this winter experienced significantly higher levels of PM2.5 concentration than in 2013 and 2014.

Baoding in Hebei province saw a total of 35 days of heavy pollution, while Beijing saw 26 such days.

Greenpeace East Asia research shows that the principal reason for this higher frequency of smog in Beijing and surrounding areas this winter was wind and humidity conditions. Though weather conditions help smog develop, the origin of the pollution remains heavy coal burning across northern China.

“The WHO calling air pollution a ‘global public health emergency’, China’s regular ‘airpocalypses’ and Beijing’s red alerts in December are a stark reminder of what needs to be done: control coal consumption. The upcoming five-year plan offers a golden opportunity to put another nail in the coffin of king coal,” said Mr Dong.

Even so, Beijing was among roughly 90 per cent of the cities Greenpeace analysed where air pollution improved overall last year.