Beijing to Remove 300K Heavily Polluting Heavy-Duty Vehicles Within One Year
05 October 2008
Xinhua. Beijing will replace or remove some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles within one year in an attempt to further improve its air quality. All heavily polluting vehicles will be banned within the sixth ring road by 1 October 2009.
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| The 6th ring road in Beijing. Click to enlarge. |
Beijing has multiple ring roads (beltways)—the sixth ring road (physically the fifth), is currently the outermost at some 15-20 km from the center of Beijing. This toll expressway ring road links Beijing with Shunyi District, Tongzhou District, Changping District and Daxing District.
Currently, the number of heavily polluting vehicles accounts for about 10 percent of the total in the capital, but the pollutants they emit cover about half of the total from vehicles. The air quality at night often showed a pollution peak, which was mainly due to the large number of such vehicles running into the downtown, according to Feng Yuqiao, a Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau official.
As restrictions designed to reduce pollution for the Olympics and Paralympics have expired, smog has reappeared in the capital.
Friday’s Beijing Times said the air in the city remained polluted for three successive days, citing pollution indexes for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 106, 104 and 126, respectively...The reappearance of the smog was blamed on such factors as the lifting of some provisional environmental protection measures taken to ensure good air quality during the Olympics and Paralympics, the restarting of work at construction sites,and the return of heavily-polluting vehicles on the roads.
This doesn't seem ambitious enough for Beijing.....it seems like it won't do enough to solve the problem. ...ejj...
Posted by: ejj | 05 October 2008 at 07:33 AM
ejj:
Please show us another major city who has imposed a complete ban on very high pollution vehicles?
London temporarily imposed a special inner city tax but not a ban.
However, would such a ban also ban high pollution city diesel buses?
Other high pollution 2 and 3-wheel vehicles used in Beijing should also be replaced or restricted.
Posted by: HarveyD | 05 October 2008 at 07:49 AM
HarveyD:
Western European and Canadian&USian nations all have stricter emission standards on all vehicles. China noticed that they could cut pollution "in half" by dealing with trucks only. Other nations have cut pollution "in half" by restricting the emissions of all vehicles.
From the perspective of pollution, "in half" is 'in half" no matter how it gets done.
I'm glad to see China take this step and I'm glad that the Olympics may have helped to bring about a more permanent positive change in Beijing. Once people were reminded what cleaner air was like, they wanted to get some back. I hope China is successful with this measure and considers implementing it in cities like Shanghai, Wuhan, and others as well, in addition to other anti-pollution measures.
Posted by: stomv | 05 October 2008 at 09:07 AM
It is almost draconian this law. It will certainly bankrupt hundreds of truck businesses in Beijing and force others out of the city. Replacing 300.000 trucks before October 1 is going to require a lot of investments that only the wealthiest and largest companies can manage such as the trucks operated by Beijing city and some large national truck carriers that may shift truck purchases so that all the new pollution compliant trucks go to Beijing and the rest of the country get Beijing’s non-compliant trucks.
Surely the Olympics have been an eye opener for the establishment of Beijing. The city simply can’t be great until it is as clean as or cleaner than any other mayor city in the west. Indeed, air pollution is very democratic in the sense that it is equally harmful to poor as well as for rich. A recent report said that 80 million Chinese stand to die grossly prematurely form air pollution in the next 20 years so clearly they need to do something drastic to solve the problem.
Posted by: Henrik | 05 October 2008 at 11:33 AM
China noticed 1/2 the pollution was from 1/10th of the transport.
They went for the low hanging fruit.
The next phase of requiring higher standards and encouraging electric cars is a more permanent fix, but takes time to implement.
Posted by: John Taylor | 05 October 2008 at 11:37 AM
Some similar problems exits in the US, the port of
Oakland is an example. A draconian law to force the
vehicles at the port to switch to electric, or CNG,
would be much appreciated by the locals.
Posted by: Nick(Colorado) | 05 October 2008 at 02:40 PM
It is a completely sensible approach - do a pareto chart, find the worst offenders, and ban them.
It will put some people out of business, but the Chinese are not big on individual liberties.
People like to beat up the car companies because they are big and (used to be) rich, but if you analyze sources of pollution per unit, you might be better going after other things, like 2 stroke engines in lawn mowers and barbecues (or whatever).
Personally, I would like to see all diesel cars going stop/start or mild hybrid over a 5 year period, from a "local" pollution point of view, as much as a CO2 reduction one.
If you mandated it, and gave them enough time, it could be done.
[ You could mandate the pollution levels and let the market figure out how to do it. ]
The trick is to try to have 2 sets of pollution figures - one for rural areas, and another for urban areas.
You could never get it completely right, but you might be able to do it better than it is now, which is one set for all.
Posted by: mahonj | 06 October 2008 at 01:13 AM
What america tends to do is BUY the old clubkers and crush em. This works rather well and has retired alot of old trucks and cars over the years.
Posted by: wintermane | 06 October 2008 at 06:08 AM