Hubei Province Including PM2.5 into Emission Reduction System

It is reported that during the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, all cities and counties in Hubei Province will install all PM2.5 monitoring instruments and incorporate PM2.5 into the emission reduction system. If the air quality is not up to the standard, they must be held accountable for “one-man” responsibilities. This means that the air quality is good or bad, the concentration of PM2.5 will be linked to the achievements of the leaders of the prefectures and cities, including the year-end assessment.

At present, Hubei Province takes the four reductions of chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides as indicators for performance evaluation. Last year, the four pollutants in Hubei Province decreased by 1.64%, 1.74%, 6.49%, and 4.43% respectively over the previous year, successfully completing the annual emission reduction tasks set by the national and provincial governments at the beginning of the year.

Since the beginning of this year, smog and haze have appeared in many places in Hubei Province and the air pollution has been serious. In addition to determining that the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the air have been reduced by 0.2% and 1.5%, respectively, in 2012, the Provincial Environmental Protection Agency is planning to incorporate PM2.5 into the statistics, monitoring, and assessment system for pollutant reduction.

At present, there are 10 air monitoring stations in Wuhan that can monitor PM2.5 on a 24-hour basis. Yichang, Jingzhou, and Leiyang all have monitoring capabilities. The Provincial Environmental Protection Agency stated that it will strive to carry out monitoring of six indicators including PM2.5 in various cities and pre-2016 cities, and will formulate the task of reducing the PM2.5 concentration.

The relevant person in charge of the Hubei Provincial Environmental Protection Office said that this means that the quality of PM2.5 will be linked to the performance of the leaders of the prefectures and cities in the year of the end of the year.

According to reports, this year, Hubei Province focused on the construction of emission reduction projects for the “six plants (fields) and one car” (thermal power plants, steel plants, cement plants, paper mills, urban sewage treatment plants, livestock and poultry farms, and motor vehicles). A total of 20 units of 8.28 million kW units will be planned to be built into denitrification facilities throughout the year. The newly added sewage treatment capacity shall not be less than 700,000 tons/day, and the elimination of the operation of Huang Biao motor vehicles registered before 2005 shall be accelerated.

It is reported that in order to improve air quality, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China has issued the PM2.5 emission reduction task this year: to ensure that the average concentration of PM2.5 in the air in key regions in 2015 will fall by 5%, and that in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Pearl River Delta, and the Yangtze River Delta. Decline by 6%.