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On-the-spot fines for drivers as northern China gets tough on pollution
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 03 December, 2014, 1:45pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 03 December, 2014, 3:50pm
Nectar Gan
[email protected]
Authorities hope fining motorists who drive heavily polluting cars will help to ease the serious problems of smog affecting Beijing and the surrounding region. Photo: AP
Drivers will be given on-the-spot fines if found to be using vehicles that exceed emission standards in Beijing and surrounding areas.
The tough new measure is part of plans agreed by the environmental authorities who are joining forces to tackle northern China’s serious air pollution problems, Xinhua reported yesterday.
The main sources of the area’s pollution are the exhaust emissions from Beijing’s more than 5.5 million motor vehicles, together with coal burning emissions of factories in neighbouring regions, dust storms from the north and local construction dust.
The joint efforts to control vehicle emission pollution were agreed at a meeting of the environmental departments of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Inner Mongolia held in the capital yesterday.
Beijing and the surrounding areas had often hit by heavy smog since the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit ended last month, before a strong cold front arrived on last Sunday to clear up the skies.
The capital’s motor vehicles account for 86 per cent of the locally emitted carbon monoxide, said Li Kunsheng, head of the motor vehicle emission management division of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.
Li said car exhausts cause 31.1 per cent of local emissions of PM 2.5 – fine particles found in smoke and haze, called particulate matter, measuring less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, which cause the most damage to lungs, Xinhua reported.
The number of non-local vehicles entering Beijing from neighbouring provinces is also increasing yearly, Xinhua said.
Figures recorded along major roads leading to Beijing show that more than 200,000 vehicles enter the city each daily.
In comparison, only 20 per cent of the PM 2.5 emissions in Tianjin came from vehicles, while in Shijiazhuang city, Hebei province, only 15 per cent of PM 2.5 emissions were produced by vehicles, Xinhua reported.
Tackling pollution by motor vehicles was now a key part of the efforts to prevent and control air pollution in the region, said Feng Yuqiao, head of Beijing’s motor vehicle emission management centre.
He said cross-regional coordination could help overcome many of the problems of controlling air pollution, by creating a set of standards for evaluating vehicle emissions, sharing regulatory data, and unifying law enforcement against polluting vehicles.
A special team is to draw up the region’s unified set of regulations and standards on vehicle emissions.
Vehicles found to be exceeding the emission standards will receive on-the-spot fines, Xinhua reported.
All of the regulatory information will be made easy to share between the region’s different environmental departments, it said.
