by Ming Jing
Prologue
Grasping the nettle since the outbreak of the smog problem in 2013, all sectors of society in China have made concerted efforts to win the battle to keep the skies blue. In this long-lasting environmental mitigation war, the expert team led by Dr. Ping He, president of the International Fund for China’s Environment (IFCE), has always been leading the charge. Now, as the smog causes increasingly clear, lights for more effective mitigation has emerged. In the “2024 Washington International Forum on Innovation and Cooperation” held in October , Dr Ping He reported on “IFCE’s efforts in promoting air pollution control in China ” and introduced IFCE’s extraordinary course in helping smog mitigation in China for last ten years (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Dr. Ping He reporting at “2024 Washington International Forum on Innovation and Cooperation”
Section 1: The Dawn of Hope
On September 13,2024, an important document from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) of China injected new vitality into the economic development of northern China. The document clearly standardized the fees and fines for enterprises, and strictly prohibited the “one-size-fits-all” business closure measures. The document stressed that restricting industrial production is not allowed to meet the annual environmental quality improvement target; and it is strictly prohibited to take simple and crude “cutting all” measure such as emergency shutdown and suspension to deal with environmental inspection, as well as “all shutdown” and “stopping first “. At the same time, the State Council also issued a document abolishing the “Notice on the Issuance of the Three-year Action Plan for Winning the Battle for the Blue Sky” (No.22,2018) and other related documents.
The introduction of this policy is a positive response to Dr. Ping He’s previous smog control recommendation. In May 2024, Dr. Ping He sent a letter to President Xi Jinping, offering suggestions on more effective smog control. The first suggestion is to “Cancel the release of emergency management measures for heavy pollution condition” and “restrict local governments implementing large-scale shutdowns and production cuts under the guise of environmental protection”. Dr. Ping He believes that the current mitigation methods in the past few years did not address the real cause of the formation of heavy smog, the mitigation should be more scientific, reasonable and precise measures, rather than simply stopping and restricting industrial production and thus harming the economy.
Section 2: Control of the smog dilemma
In 2013, China was hit by a sudden and shocking smog disaster. In the face of the environmental crisis, the central and locals were taking rapid actions, investing huge resources, implementing a series of measures including reducing power plant and industrial flue gas emissions (ultra-low standards), using gas and electricity to replace coal uses , closing small and heavy polluted factories, control of volatile organic compounds (VOC), automobile exhaust, and construction site dust, etc. Although the main air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, PM2.5 emissions decreased obviously, but smog days often re-emerged. Since 2018, in the northern China, during autumn and winter seasons, the locals have to rely on “shutdown or restrict” industrial production to deal with heavy pollution. Although the measures to alleviate the degree of heavy smog, but brought the serious blow to the northern economy. Further more it was only a temporary solution, not fundamental changes. In the autumn and winter of 2020-2021, even during the epidemic, and with “shutdown or restricting production” measures, 13 large-scale smog occurred in North China / Fen and Wei river regions (see Figure 2). In January 2023, Jinan had 19 days of smog and 21 days of pollution in Xi’an.
Figure 2 Air quality index of North China on January 26 and 28, 2020
Section 3: Revealing the truth
As a non-profit international environmental organization that has long promoted environmental technology exchanges between the US and China, IFCE has paid close attention to the outbreak of heavy smog. In 2013, IFCE organized experts in Washington to discuss the causes and countermeasures for the smog outbreak in China (see Figure 3). In May 2014, IFCE’s energy experts, Li Shusheng and Wang Jianxin, submitted a proposal report to the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), entitled “New discoveries on the causes of severe smog and suggestions on the promotion of effective smog control technologies”, pointing out that the wet desulfurization process in industrial flue gas treatment may be the main cause of the outbreak of heavy smog. The report was forwarded to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), but received no attention.
Figure 3 In 2013, IFCE hosted a discussion on smog control in China in Washington, attended by officials from the Chinese Embassy and the US EPA , as well as well-known environmental experts.
In mid-December 2016, another severe smog swept through 11 provinces and cities, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan, with more than 100 cities severely polluted, seriously affecting the production, life and health of residents. In February 2017, Dr. Ping He published an article on the IFCE wechat account titled “No attention to the opinions of engineers, no results for China’s three years of smog control “, pointing out that the white smoke（exhaust gases）discharged by “wet desulphurization” leads to heavy smog. This article and the subsequent debates with the power system experts on the causes of smog in China have attracted wide attention and discussion (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 Dr. Ping He’s article on the causes of smog was hotly discussed on the Internet
In August 2017, in the first meeting of 2017 Shandong science and technology think-tank forum, with the theme of ” causes of smog and control of the scattered coal burning”, a senior researcher / independent investigator, then deputy director of Shandong Academy of Science and Technology/ Department of Development Strategy, Zhou Yong, released the report of his past three years research, answered about the “smog causes” which labeled as ” Question of Prime Minister “, because late Prime Minister Li Keqiang asked for the public. Zhou said: ” wet desulphurization is causing smog outbreak in 2013, also is the reason that smog rebounded in 2016 even under the most strict control in last three years” (see Figure 5). This result was supported by Professor Chen Jianmin, then executive vice president of the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences at Fudan University, Professor Zhu Weiqun from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Shandong University, and some other experts who have worked on the front line on this issue for a long time. In December 2017, Dr. Ping He and Li Shusheng published an article on the internal magazine of the Advisors’ Office of the State Council titled as ” Is wet desulfurization the main cause of smog?” (see Figure 6). Under the promotion of IFCE and domestic experts, 11 provinces and cities including Tianjin city and Hebei province issued regulations requiring the treatment of “white flue gas” discharged from wet desulfurization during 2017 and 2018. The “dehumidification and de-whitening” projects were launched in various cities. This was the first time in the history of environmental governance that local governments have enacted to control pollution without the demand from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Figure 5. White flue gas discharged after wet desulfurization in the power plant
Figure 6 Dr. Ping He and Li Shusheng published an article ” Is wet desulfurization the main cause of smog?” in the internal journal “National Advising” of the Advisors’ Office of the State Council
Section 4: Insist to progress
In 2018, IFCE, with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, assisted the Xuzhou city municipal government in controlling the “white flue gas” of 21 generating units of nine power plants (see Figure 7 and 8). Xuzhou’s PM2.5 in 2018 fell by 8% from 2017, much higher than the average 2% drop in Jiangsu province.
Figure 7 Dr. Ping He and the IFCE expert team discussed the “white flue gas” mitigation project with the Xuzhou municipal government
Figure 8 Dr. Ping He (second from left) and expert Li Shusheng (second from right) at the treatment site in Xuzhou
Due to the huge investments in the power plant groups in the early ultra-low discharge for pollutant emission required by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), these groups were not willing to continue to invest in the “dehumidification and de-whitening” projects. In 2019, the MEE issued an order to stop the “dehumidification and de-whitening” projects launched in various cities, and asked enterprises to strictly stop or restrict production in heavy pollution condition (see Figure 9). Some places even asked farmers to put blankets on the ground during harvesting to reduce dust. However, the white flue gas discharged from wet desulfurization has not been treated, coupled with ultra-low standard denitrification (with nitrogen oxide removal), which leads to serious ammonia escape and further aggravating the generation of fine particulate matter. The two heavy regional smogs at the end of 2023 and early 2024 span more than 10 provinces and cities in central and eastern China, almost repeating the smog outbreak in early 2013.
Figure 9 Documents and related reports on the shutdown and production restrictions in different regions and in recent years
In the face of smog rebounding, policy changes, resistance of influential enterprises and authoritative experts disregard, IFCE experts were not discouraged. With the support of the Air Pollution Control and Low Carbon Committee, a sub-group of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, they continued to organize forums, in-depth discussion and technical investigation, discuss mitigation standards, recommend treatment technologies, and provide advising reports to the concerned government agencies (see Figure 10 and 11). Among them, Professor Song Guojun from the School of Environment of Renmin University of China concluded through big data analysis that the main reason for days PM2.5 exceeds the standard was aerosol dominant in “white flue gas” (accounting for more than 70%). In 2021 and 2022, through Sun Chengye and Zhen Zhen, members of the CPPCC National Committee, IFCE team submitted two formal recommendation proposals on in-depth smog mitigation to Chinese central governments.
Figure 10 Second symposium on Accurate Air Pollution Control was held in Beijing in November 2020
Figure 11 In December 2021, the “PM2.5&C02 Forum” was held online
Section 5: Blue sky can be expected
In the letter to President Xi, Dr. Ping He also put forward two specific measures: one is to use “waste heat recovery” technique to control “white flue gas”, which can reduce the mitigation cost; the other is to promote ammonia-free denitrification technology to greatly reduce the ammonia content in the atmosphere. These are very targeted measures studied and researched by IFCE experts.
On the journey of smog mitigation, IFCE experts learnt from the successful international experience, analyzed the particularity of the causes of domestic smog, closely cooperated with international and domestic experts, and took multiple measures to promote the changes of smog mitigation policies and technology improvement. The governments and enterprises are now able to identify the right targets and make precise efforts to solve the severe smog problem that troubled northern China for last decade. Although in this autumn and winter, smog emerged as expected, but the fog has been cleared, the blue sky can be expected (see Figure 12)!
Figure 12 The blue sky and white clouds that people anticipate