Reuters | By: David Stanway | GPE – September 07, 2017:
China has pledged to cut average concentrations of airborne particles known as PM2.5 by more than 15 percent year-on-year in the winter months in 28 northern cities to meet key smog targets, the environment ministry said.
Originally published August 24, 2017: In a 143-page winter smog “battleplan” posted on its website, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said the new target, for the October to March period, would apply to Beijing and Tianjin, along with 26 other cities in the smog-prone provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Henan.
China’s efforts to control pollution have often roiled the prices of steel, iron ore and coal with output routinely curtailed as a result of emergency smog regulations and inspection campaigns.
China is under pressure this year to meet politically important 2017 air quality targets. It aims to cut 2012 levels of PM2.5 by more than a quarter in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and bring average concentrations down to 60 micrograms per cubic meter in the Chinese capital.
But PM2.5 averages rose in the first seven months of the year as a result of near record-high smog in January and February, which China blamed on “unfavorable weather conditions”.
Experts still believe, however, that China remains on course to meet the 2017 targets set out in a groundbreaking air quality action plan published by the government in 2013.
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