SOURCE: Beijing Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau

POLICY DOCUMENT: Three-year Action Plan for Protecting Beijing's Blue Skies

EXPERT: Professor Wang Shuxiao, School of Environment, Tsinghua University; head of the Municipal Tracking and Research Group on the Causes and Control of Heavy Air Pollution

Question 1: I understand that you have been tracking air quality in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. Official data shows that after five years of efforts to tackle the problem, air quality in Beijing has been greatly improved, while the sources of air pollution has also changed. Is this conclusion consistent with your research findings?

Prof. Wang: From 2013 to 2017, Beijing implemented a Five-year Clean Air Action Plan. Our findings confirmed that through these five years air quality in Beijing has improved significantly. Compared with 2013, PM2.5 concentration decreased from 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter to 58 in 2017, which is a drop of 35.6%. Meanwhile, the concentrations of SO2, NO2, PM10 and other pollutants also decreased significantly. And this is especially true for SO2 concentration, which has been cut by more than 70%. Such an improvement of air quality is mainly the result of the adjustment of energy structure set in motion by the Clean Air Action Plan, especially the clean energy substitution for residential consumption, as well as the combined actions of vehicle pollution control, dust control and the upgrading of industrial pollutant standards. With the implementation of these measures for pollution control, Beijing's air pollution source structure has also undergone significant changes. Our latest PM2.5 source analysis shows that when compared with regional contribution, Beijing's local emission is still the main source, accounting for two-thirds of total emission. And among the local sources, mobile emissions rank first, followed by dust, then by industrial sources, household non-point emissions and coal-fired sources. So we could observe that sources of PM2.5 have gone through some major changes as compared with the results of the analysis of in 2014, with the following characteristics: significant growth in two sources of pollution, i.e. mobile sources and dust, and significant decrease in industrial emissions and coalfired sources. Household non-point sources, which are closely related to everyone's life, have become increasingly prominent. In summary, through five years of pollution control efforts, air quality in Beijing has indeed improved, and the sources of air pollution have also changed dramatically.

Question 2: Following the Five-year Clean Air Action Plan, Beijing unveiled the Three-year Action Plan for Protecting the Blue Skies, which is now in implementation. In your opinion, are the measures prescribed in the plan the right things to do for the prevention and control of air pollution in Beijing at the current stage?

Prof. Wang: I have just mentioned that the source structure of air pollution in Beijing has changed. As the action plan was being developed, the policy makers took these changes into consideration, on top of a review of experiences of air pollution prevention and control in the past five years or even the past 20 years. Therefore, the action plan puts special emphasis on the control of key pollution sources, such as mobile and dust sources, and among the mobile sources, pollution caused by heavy-duty diesel vehicles is a priority issue to tackle. In this sense, the three-year plan is indeed hitting right on the nail. In addition, the plan takes into account the increased difficulty in pollution control. As effort continues in the prevention and control of air pollution, it is found that the problems that remain are the most challenging ones. For example, industrial sources which are easier to control have declined as a factor of pollution, and the contribution of coal-fired sources has also dropped. The contribution of household and mobile sources, on the contrary, has increased. This means that Beijing is now in a more difficult and yet important phase in air pollution control. Therefore, in order to overcome these difficulties, we need to have in place complete and comprehensive laws and regulations and a pollution control strategy with effective and targeted measure and broad participation. Effective urban management depends on proper plans and actions, with the support of technology.

Question 3: In your opinion, are we going to see air quality further improved in Beijing with the control measures to be adopted in the next three years?

Prof. Wang: First, if you look at the specific measures contained in the Three-year Action Plan, more attention is paid to the whole process control and source control. In other words, we are not just doing things to control pollution towards the end of the chain, but also placing more emphasis on necessary structural changes for transportation, industrial production, energy consumption and land use structure. This means that we have a different strategy for pollution control: instead of merely treating the symptoms, we are now tackling both the symptoms and the roots, with perhaps even more emphasis on the root causes. And we expect such a strategy to produce remarkable results. Then at the national level, there is also a lot of attention to the action plan. Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei provinces, and the surrounding areas, are now working together in a joint prevention and control mechanism with unified monitoring systems and standards, which ensures synchronous improvement in air quality at the regional level. This joint mechanism in the region should be able to help Beijing realize its goal for air quality improvement. The third thing I want to say is that the action plan contains more targeted measures for the control of key sources of pollution, which will make the plan more effective. In a nutshell, there are now favorable conditions for the implementation of the plan with the regional cooperation, right strategies and plans as well as updated institutional structures.

In the case of heavy-duty diesel vehicles, previous control efforts focused on the emission level of each vehicle, and regulations were therefore repeatedly tightened in order to bring down emissions from individual vehicles. The Three-year Action Plan, however, aims at adjusting the structure of transport. That is to shift more transportation to railways so that there is less dependence on road transport, which in turn will reduce the use of heavy-duty vehicles. I think it is a very good example of addressing both the symptoms and the root causes.

As for dust pollution control, the measures taken previously were targeted more on each construction site as the end of the pollution chain. What we attempt to establish now is a dust pollution control mechanism or system that tackles the problems at the source, which entails assigning responsibility of dust pollution control to a variety of functional departments in the government, including, for example, the housing and urban construction department, transportation department, urban management department, and departments in charge of water, landscape, urban administrative law enforcement, etc. At the same time, there are specific measures for pollution control which include on-site inspection and video and online monitoring. There are also other approaches such as official counselling, suspension of rights for construction bidding, pollution ranking, public reprimand, pursuit of accountability and suggested rectifications. With all these measures and means put to effect, there will be a detailed management of the sources of dust pollution in a complete process that is under constant monitoring and control.

Taking volatile organic compounds as another example. The Clean Air Action Plan 2013-2017 indicated that volatile organic compounds pollution should be controlled mainly by tightening industrial pollutant standards. But as we have observed in the latest analysis of PM2.5 sources, industrial sources accounted for 12% of the total pollution, which is approximately at the same level with that caused by household sources. As a result, one significant change in the action plan is that the focus is no longer put exclusively on industries, and the goal now includes the mandatory use of quality building coatings, and the control of restaurant emissions which is closely related to people's life.

翻译：北京第二外国语学院 张颖 鲍川运