INTERVIEW - China's Tangshan Mulls Move As City Cleans Air
Date: 03-Mar-08
Country: CHINA
Author: Lucy Hornby
The campaign to cut air pollution was spurred by the upcoming Beijing Olympics but is expected to continue long after the Games end.
Tangshan, a city of 7 million people a few hours from Beijing, is home to dozens of steel mills fed by rich iron deposits. It accounts for about one-tenth of China's steel output and about half that of Hebei Province, which encircles Beijing.
Tangshan is one of several areas that have been asked to trim emissions to ensure cleaner air for the Beijing Olympics in August.
"Even if there were no Olympics, we would need to prioritise sustainable development. The Olympics give us an opportunity to do this," Zhao told Reuters in Beijing on Thursday.
"Tangshan is at the gates of Beijing. If the wind blows, the pollution floats right over."
During a 100-day trial late last year, Tangshan city shut more than 1,000 small polluters from mid-September to December and saw a clear improvement in air quality, said the city's party secretary, Zhao Yong.
Giant Tangshan Steel is working on a plan to shut its facilities in the city during the next decade as a long-term measure to clean up the air, Zhao said.
It hopes to build a new 20 million tonne per year plant on the Hebei coast -- either in Caofeidian, where a 10 million tonne per year joint venture with Shougang Group is already under construction, or in the nearby Jintang port.
Other permanent measures include fuelling industries and buses in Tangshan with natural gas from the Bohai sea, and developing biogas projects in Tangshan's rural hinterland.
"We've been chosen as a showcase for scientific development, for a modern, resource-lean and environmentally friendly industrial area.
"But we've brought forward a lot of plans in order to better serve the Olympics," said the lanky Zhao, who like Chinese president Hu Jintao began his career in the Communist Youth League. He has held his office for a year and a half.
EMISSIONS CUTS
Although in the medium term Tangshan city is encouraging other industries to move to the coast, more short-term measures are needed to cut choking pollution during the Olympics.
Beijing and five surrounding provinces must cut emissions for two months from late July, under a detailed plan approved by the State Council, China's cabinet, to clear the air for the Olympics and Paralympics.
Tangshan's 100-day shutdown of small steel, sinter, concrete and coke plants caused sulphur dioxide levels to drop by 25 percent and chemical oxygen demand -- a measure of water pollution -- to fall by 20 percent, Zhao said.
"We want to make the results of those 100 days permanent," Zhao said.
Industrial areas such as Tangshan have struggled to meet central directives to cut emissions and limit overcapacity in polluting industries.
Beijing has had mixed success in staunching the flow of investment to inefficient heavy industry. That's in part because China's double-digit annual economic growth has caused commodity prices to soar and inflated returns for mills and mines, which are often privately owned and thus insulated from government pressure.
Rising prices for iron ore and coking coal would continue to complicate efforts to shut polluting plants, Zhao said, acknowledging that owners often try to reopen closed mines.
Steel statistics for Hebei in November show a sharp 22 percent drop in output compared with strong output the month before, followed by a slight rebound in December. Steel industry officials at the time attributed the lower production to rolling power blackouts.
But pig iron production in Hebei, which normally moves in tandem with steel, fell by only 6 percent in November, and by December had rebounded above October levels. Neither Zhao nor steel industry officials have accounted for the discrepancy.
(Editing by Ken Wills)