How Much Will Beijing Spend Tackling Air Pollution?

After declaring the first ever red alert in the city’s history last year, Chinese officials have announced they plan to spend almost £2 billion in cleaning up the airways in its capital city, Beijing.

Among other measures, the government plan to replace coal with cleaner energy forms, revamp over 2,500 factories in the city and get rid of hundreds of thousands of the most polluting vehicles from its streets.

An ongoing battle

With the world’s largest population and an incredible rate of economic and industrial growth over the past few decades, it’s little surprise that China has struggled with air quality issues. For many years, it suffered the unenviable reputation of biggest polluting and most polluted nation in the world, though latterly its neighbour India has overtaken it in many respects.

Regardless, China – and in particular, huge cities like Beijing – have consistently been subjected to excessive levels of pollution, posing a major health risk to their inhabitants. With 22 million people residing in the Chinese capital, it’s clear that something must be done to prevent further premature deaths from poor air quality.

In response, acting mayor Cai Qi has pledged 18.2 billion yuan (£1.8 billion) to addressing the city’s chronic air quality problems.

The time for action is now

China has already made movements in the right direction in terms of tackling pollution – in 2013, the southern city of Shenzhen implemented a carbon cap in an attempt to reduce its spiralling carbon emissions from factories and power plants.

Now, the Beijing mayor has indicated he will be doing something similar in the capital by addressing the environmental friendliness of 2,570 factories across the city. He also intends to remove as many as 300,000 polluting vehicles from Beijing streets and replace the energy generation facilities in 700 suburbs, substituting coal for greener means of creating power.

The endgame goal of these measures is to bring particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5, an especially harmful pollutant) under control. Whereas concentrations of PM2.5 currently reside at an average of 73mg/m³, Cai is committed to bringing this figure down to 60mg/m³.

Transgressors will be punished

Cai has promised to introduce a special arm of the police force dedicated to addressing environmental transgressions in a bid to deter factory owners and private citizens from flouting environmental laws.

“Acts of excessively or secretly discharging pollutants will be severely punished,” he said, promising that the city would “strictly implement emission standards, enhance the environmental law enforcement and establish an environmental protection police force.”

The most common transgressions include the combustion of wood or other biomass sources to heat homes, burning rubbish and having open-air barbecues. Any of those caught breaking the rules will be subject to a sizable fine – last year, the city amassed a total of 40 million yuan (£4.8 million) from 1,500 air pollution misdemeanours alone.