China Tries to Control Worsening Air Pollution

TAIYUAN, China â€”  When it rains in China’s coal country, soot rubs off blackened tree trunks like ink.

It is the residue of the throat-stinging smog that blankets Taiyuan in north-central China’s “sea of coal.�

But the problem isn’t limited to mining country. Coal supplies three-quarters of China’s energy and is by far the biggest source of air pollution choking its cities. It is also contributing to environmental problems outside its borders.

China already is the world’s No. 1 producer and consumer of coal. Experts say that by 2020, it will be using at least twice as much coal, the only fuel it has in plentiful supply.

Acknowledging that pollution is worsening, the government has proclaimed environmental protection a national goal. It has toughened air pollution control laws, closed thousands of heavily polluting factories and begun experimental projects for cleaner coal use.

There are signs of progress.

The government spent nearly $60 million on a seven-year cleanup of Benxi in the industrial northeast, a city so polluted it once disappeared from satellite photos. Its residents had the highest rates of lung diseases in China.

This year, the government said Benxi once again meets basic standards for human life.

China says its target for 2000 is for air pollution levels to be no higher than in 1995.

It is a goal that environmental experts say may be unattainable because investment in pollution-reducing equipment lags and many industries still operate without any emission controls.

“The government is very concerned about pollution,� said Wang Zhongan, a government energy planner. “We will not allow an unlimited increase in consumption. Maybe the total quantity of carbon emissions will be equivalent to the United States one day. But on a per capita basis? I don’t think so.�

*

The United States, with one-fourth of China’s population, is the leading source of carbon dioxide, the biggest component of atmospheric “greenhouse gases� that cause global warming.

China already is No. 2. Without improved efficiency and a shift to cleaner energy, China’s emissions of carbon dioxide could triple in the next few decades, experts say.

Another problem is acid rain. The result of sulfur dioxide emissions from burning coal, acid rain destroys hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops and forest each year in China and neighboring countries.

Although China’s coal-burning power stations have equipment to trap harmful particulates, few have the costly traps needed to remove sulfur dioxide, Canadian ecologist Vaclav Smil said in a report this year.

Indeed, most of China’s coal is still burned without any kind of emission controls in small industrial boilers and household stoves, Smil said.

Industrial use of coal far outweighs residential use. But burning coal in roadside vendors’ stoves or for home heating is the bigger health hazard, because the smoke is vented close to where people breathe it in.

Even in Beijing, where most people live in apartments heated by natural gas, neighborhoods of old, single-story houses depend on coal. Young men blackened with coal dust pedal flat-bed tricycles stacked with short cylinders of coal through Beijing’s winding back lanes.

“There’s a smoke dragon over all these houses in the winter,� said a retired office worker who lives in a century-old house in the capital. The woman, who gave her name only as Mrs. Dong, said the smoke bothers her throat, but living in a cold house is worse.

In Taiyuan, a city of 3 million people in the northern province of Shaanxi, natural gas has replaced coal for most home heating. The red brick chimneys that sprout from all the city’s apartment houses and small businesses no longer gush with sooty smoke.

But intense industrial use of coal continues. Smog engulfs Taiyuan from late afternoon until midmorning, when the wind picks up and disperses it.

Song Wenyu, director of the provincial environmental protection bureau, said the conversion to gas and installation of pollution equipment at power plants has helped. Particulate levels in the city’s air have dropped from 1,200 micrograms per cubic meter a decade ago to 540 micrograms, he said.

Still, that is at least six times the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization.

Elsewhere in the province, illegal coking ovens and paper mills burn coal with no equipment to trap pollutants. Such plants are supposed to be shut down under a law that took effect Oct. 1.

Revisions to the air pollution law adopted last year now set standards for clean coal use, mandate sulfur control zones in areas severely affected by acid rain, and order a phase-out of outdated coal-burning equipment.

*

This year, the government began experimenting with charging some factories for sulfur emissions. The dirtiest factories will soon be hit with heavy taxes, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported recently.

Since China’s economic reforms began 17 years ago, a drive to improve energy conservation has kept growth in energy use at only half that of economic growth--an unprecedented accomplishment for a developing country, said William Chandler, an energy expert in Washington for Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

“The question is, can it be sustained without new efforts? Probably not without imports of better technology,� Chandler said.

Charles Johnson, an energy analyst at the East-West Center in Honolulu, said China must assume most of the cleanup burden itself, because “there’s probably not enough aid in the world to make a major impact.�

Chinese officials say their country cannot afford all the technology it needs.

If China follows the pattern of wealth first, cleanup later like its neighbors Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, even its most affluent coastal provinces probably will not start seriously tackling air pollution for 10 or 20 more years, Johnson said.

China has substantial research projects in clean-coal technology, such as coal-water slurry and methane gas from coal beds, but has been slow to apply it to commercial plants, he said.

“Expansion of coal use is increasing the pollution rate much more than clean-coal technology is reducing it,� Johnson said.