<
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-14/china-is-clearing-up-its-smog-and-the-whole-world-could-benefit>
"It’s easy to forget, but a decade ago the winter months were routinely marked
by apocalyptic imagery from Beijing. Cold, still air trapping the smoke
belching from northeastern China’s coal plants and steel mills regularly turned
the region into a hellish landscape, prompting booming sales of air purifiers
and face masks and causing the US embassy to start publishing its own pollution
data due to widespread distrust of official figures.
That nightmare situation has dissipated as quickly as a choking smog in the
face of a strong northerly wind. A series of ever-tightening regulations on
particulates — sulfur and nitrogen dioxides and other chemicals that can easily
be inhaled and pass into the human bloodstream — has shown remarkable success
in clearing up the skies.
Concentrations of PM2.5, the smallest and most dangerous type of particulate,
have dropped to the level of Shanghai and Guangzhou, southern cities that tend
to burn less coal because of their warmer winters. Annual average levels are
not far below the exceptional readings recorded during the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, when swaths of industry were temporarily shut down to disguise the
scale of pollution in the city.
The cleanup has been a huge benefit to people locally. PM2.5 is a major cause
of heart and respiratory diseases, with one 2019 study estimating the measures
may prevent about 218,000 premature deaths by 2030. Globally, however, it’s
fallen short of what the world needs.
That’s because the same measures in other countries caused coal shutdowns,
something China is falling behind on. Controls on smokestack emissions have
long been one of the most potent, if under-appreciated, tools for pushing the
most climate-damaging forms of power generation out of the market. In Europe
and the US, coal-fired generation was struggling economically during the 2010s
as a result of the plummeting costs of renewable and gas-fired power. The coup
de grace, however, was often delivered by pollution-control rules. Tightening
regulations on sulfur and nitrogen oxides — known commonly as SOX and NOX —
forced power-plant owners to decide whether to invest in costly retrofits
needed to meet the new targets. In many markets, that was the decisive factor
in deciding to close the plant instead.
It’s not turned out quite the same way in China. While particulate pollution
has indeed fallen — and is set to drop further thanks to new rules announced in
December — coal generation has continued to rise. Thermal electricity output
was up 5.7% during the first 11 months of 2023 compared to a year earlier, and
about 47% above its level during the same period of 2013, when the current
crackdown on PM2.5 pollution began.
Some of that is down to a question of where electricity is generated. China’s
toughest PM2.5 measures are reserved for the huge conurbations around Beijing,
Shanghai, and Guangzhou. That’s kept thermal power production in those areas
relatively static, with generation shifting away from the cities as new power
lines connected coal-rich regions in the country’s north to the wealthier
east."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-cancer-canada-elephants-africa-batteries-china/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
