OLYMPICS-HOW BEIJING IS TRYING TO MEET “GREEN” TARGETS
11.2.07 - Leído 134 veces. Enviar esta notaChina’s capital has already spent 120 billion yuan (US$16.1 billion) to combat its chronic pollution and create a clean, green Beijing ahead of the 2008 Olympics
BEIJING, China; November 2, 2007.- Here are some of the main ways the city, home to 15 million people and 3 million cars and with an annual coal consumption of 26 million tonnes, is greening up:
SWITCHING FROM COAL TO GAS:
– Already the top consumer of natural gas among Chinese cities, Beijing’s usage grew to an estimated 4.7 billion cubic metres in 2007. By the end of 2006, it had fired up 14,900 coal-fired boilers with a capacity of less than 20 tonnes.
– Cutting back coal use in some 110,000 courtyard homes in central Beijing is another key means of achieving 245 “blue-sky days” for 2007 (four more than 2006), the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau says.
CLOSING OR RELOCATING HEAVY POLLUTERS:
– Steel-maker Capital Steel, long Beijing’s worst polluter, has doused some of its blast furnaces and is being relocated out of the city to coastal Hebei Province.
– In July 2006, production ceased at another major polluter, the Beijing Coking and Chemical Factory, which had been responsible for 7,300 tonnes of dust and 7,500 tonnes of sulphur dioxide in annual emissions.
GREENING THE TRANSPORT SYSTEM:
– Car exhausts pump out 80 percent of the carbon monoxide in Beijing’s skies. To cut private cars’ contributions to pollution, new emission standards were implemented in 2005, to be updated in 2008.
– Beijing has also retired 47,000 old and inefficient taxis and more than 7,000 buses out of a total operating fleet of 60,000 taxis and 19,000 buses.
– Spectators with Olympics tickets will travel free on public transport during the Games. A new fleet of 3,795 buses powered by natural gas are already running in Beijing.
COVERING DUST FROM CONSTRUCTION:
– Beijing’s 100 million square metres of construction sites have been asked to cover their dirt and dust. Sites found to be causing dust pollution will be hit with fines.
RECYCLING WATER:
– The dry northern capital has suffered eight successive years of drought. As part of its drive to conserve scarce water resources, it obtained 10 percent of its water, some 360 million cubic metres, from recycled and reclaimed sources in 2006.
CONTROLLING SANDSTORMS:
– Green belts of trees and grass have been planted in neighbouring inner Mongolia to combat creeping desert sands that are the source of the sandstorms that whip through Beijing in spring. Forest coverage in the city reached 42.5 percent by 2006.
Sources: Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau; Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG); United Nations Environment Programme report “Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, an Environmental Review”; Beijing Drainage Group.
(Reuters)
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