Air quality continues to improve and the city's "blue value" becomes the new normal

Air pollution control needs "hard bones"

  On November 7, Xinhua News Agency was authorized to publish the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Deepening the Battle of Pollution Prevention and Control."

The opinion puts forward that by 2035, green production and lifestyles will be widely formed, carbon emissions will fall steadily after reaching the peak, the ecological environment will be fundamentally improved, and the goal of building a beautiful China will basically be achieved.

  Recently, the Asian Clean Air Center released a new report.

The report shows that since 2013, China's overall air quality has improved significantly for seven consecutive years.

Fu Lu, director of the Asia Clean Air Center China, said that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, China's air quality continued to improve, thanks to the combination of emphasis on structural adjustment, terminal governance and scientific support.

In the next step of governance, China’s already released carbon peak and carbon neutral roadmap will bring benefits to the continuous improvement of air quality.

  The more advanced the atmospheric governance is, the more difficult it is.

Under the carbon emission reduction target and the carbon neutral vision, carbon reduction has become an important way to coordinate control of air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Xiong Huawen, director of the Energy, Environment and Climate Change Research Center of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said: “Before 2020, my country will focus on improving air quality to drive carbon dioxide emissions; Emission reduction promotes the prevention and control of air pollution."

  Clean heating renovation continues to advance

  Heating in autumn and winter and clean blue sky can not be missed

  Yesterday, the whole country officially entered winter.

With the advent of the northern heating season, the prevention and control of air pollution has also entered a "difficult mode."

According to historical monitoring, from 2017 to 2020, about 90% of the country’s days of excessive PM2.5 and heavy pollution occurred in autumn and winter.

  Coal-fired heating is an important reason for the deterioration of air quality in autumn and winter.

One side is the people's cold and warm, and the other is the clean blue sky. Neither side can be missed. This puts forward higher requirements for the autumn and winter air management.

  The clean heating renovation project in the northern region is the main measure to reduce the deterioration of air pollution in autumn and winter.

In 2020, the proportion of my country's coal consumption in primary energy consumption will drop to 56.8%, and the proportion of coal-fired power installed capacity will drop below 50% for the first time.

According to the analysis of professional research institutions, in recent years, coal suppression measures have contributed more than 80% of sulfur dioxide emission reductions and more than 50% of direct PM2.5 emission reductions.

  Not long ago, Xuchang City in Henan Province received 240 million yuan in central air pollution control funds.

As the fourth batch of pilot cities for clean heating in winter, Xuchang City will receive financial support from the central government for three consecutive years.

The funds are planned to be used for projects such as improving the quality of clean heating in rural areas, achieving the goal of installing air-source hot fans and other equipment in 106,000 households in rural areas.

This kind of hot air blower does not need to burn coal, only needs a small amount of electricity, and will not emit polluting gases.

  According to the "Measures for the Management of Air Pollution Prevention Funds", the implementation period of air pollution prevention funds is to 2025, and clean heating in winter in the northern region is the key support area.

Wu Xianfeng, deputy director of the Department of Atmospheric Environment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said that in 2021, the central air pollution prevention and control funds have specially arranged clean heating operation subsidies, which have all been distributed to the localities, and the operation subsidies next year will soon be issued.

Different regions need to formulate differentiated subsidy policies, focusing on low-income groups in rural areas and people in extreme poverty.

  To control air pollution in autumn and winter, Beijing took the lead in accelerating the optimization of energy structure and reducing coal burning.

In 2020, coal consumption accounted for only 1.9% of Beijing's energy consumption. Five years ago, this figure was as high as 13.7%.

  This year, 54,000 rural residents in the three districts of Mentougou, Miyun and Yanqing in Beijing ushered in the transformation of the “coal-to-electricity” supporting power grid.

Dozens of communities will implement heating pipe network transformation and construct comprehensive energy utilization projects for heating centers.

The data shows that through the "coal to electricity" and "coal to gas" transformation, Beijing has completed the transformation of coal-fired boilers of about 30,000 steam tons, eliminated more than 2.7 million kilowatts of coal-fired units, and added more than 7 million kilowatts of gas-fired units.

  However, the improvement of air quality in a city cannot be achieved by a single effort.

Liu Jinping, a professor at the China University of Mining and Technology, said that the dispersion of air pollutants does not comply with the division of geographical administrative boundaries, but shows mixed dynamics with seasonal climate changes and air basins.

Take Beijing as an example. The emissions in the surrounding areas are higher than the national average. Whenever there are static and stable high-humidity weather and the impact of regional transmission caused by southerly winds, it is easy to cause continuous haze weather in the previous few days.

  Regional joint prevention and control is the inevitable way to control air pollution.

Recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Autumn and Winter Air Pollution Comprehensive Treatment Plan for 2021-2022."

Wu Xianfeng said that the main objectives of this year's autumn and winter efforts are to reduce heavy pollution weather and reduce PM2.5 concentrations, and focus on 59 cities in key areas such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas and the Fenwei Plain.

As of the end of 2020, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas, and the Fenwei Plain have completed clean heating renovations for about 25 million households, and about 3.48 million households will be completed this year.

  Set up 2,956 remote sensing monitoring points nationwide

  Accurately identify and coordinate management to deal with mobile pollution sources

  At the end of last year, the number of motor vehicles in Beijing still ranked first among domestic cities.

The huge number of more than 6 million puts heavy pressure on Beijing's air governance.

  According to the latest PM2.5 source analysis results, 60% of Beijing’s PM2.5 sources are local emissions at this stage, of which mobile sources account for the highest proportion, reaching 46%.

On October 29, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment held a press conference specifically for the treatment of mobile sources. It was announced at the meeting that policies such as the "Beijing 6B" gasoline and diesel local standards will be formally implemented in December this year to further reduce mobile source pollutants. proportion.

  Not only Beijing, but the "Annual Report on Environmental Management of China Mobile Sources (2021)" shows that mobile source pollution has become an important source of air pollution in large and medium-sized cities in my country.

Compared with other sources, one reason why it is difficult to manage mobile sources is that the cost of monitoring is too high.

"Because of the mobility of emission facilities, supervision and management is very difficult." said Wang Canfa, director of the Environmental Resource Law Research and Service Center of China University of Political Science and Law. Complexity."

  Take, for example, the supervision of smoky vehicles that pollute "bigger" smoky vehicles. In the past, methods such as public reporting and regular inspections were time-consuming and laborious, and the effect was not good.

Until the "intelligent recognition capture system" and other new technologies change the situation.

  At 3:45 pm on October 21st, near a main road in Xindu District, Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, a large truck drove by with black smoke and was caught by the system within a few seconds.

As a city second only to Beijing in the number of motor vehicles, Chengdu has installed 13 sets of electronic capture systems for smoky vehicles in key sections of the city.

Zeng Xiaoli, a staff member of the local motor vehicle exhaust pollution prevention and control technology guarantee center, said that this is a forensic law enforcement system that integrates video collection, vehicle detection, black smoke and exhaust gas capture and video, GPS positioning, and intelligent analysis. The front-end equipment can pass AI. The algorithm automatically recognizes and marks the suspected vehicle, and then transmits it to the rear platform.

  Yin Hang, deputy director of the Motor Vehicle Pollution Monitoring Center of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, said: “The prerequisite for precise pollution control is to first have an accurate emission base, and then the effectiveness of pollution control can be improved in a targeted manner.” Data shows that by the end of 2020, the whole country The construction of 2,956 remote sensing monitoring points (including black smoke capture) has been completed, which has provided great convenience for pollution control.

  Another difficulty in mobile source governance is cross-regional management.

Wang Canfa gave an example: “The emission standards for trucks in other places are low, and they meet the standards locally, but it’s not necessarily true when you come to Beijing.” For this reason, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei established a blacklist database of over-standard vehicles and realized data sharing. Once a vehicle with excessive emissions is found, heavy fines will be imposed, and vehicle rectification will be urged.

Xie Jinkai, head of the Atmospheric Environment Division of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment, said: “Before the data was unavailable, some cars were still running on the road and continued to pollute the atmospheric environment.”

  From the perspective of longer-term development, eliminating mobile pollution sources requires continuous optimization of the vehicle structure and promotion of new energy substitution.

Last month, Beijing issued the "Beijing Hydrogen Energy Industry Development Implementation Plan (2021-2025)", which mentioned that relying on the Winter Olympics to build a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration project and put hydrogen fuel cell vehicles into practical use.

  It may be more direct and effective to reduce the use of cars.

In recent years, various provinces and cities have successively piloted the GSP for green travel and opened up green travel platforms. Green travel for the public will generate carbon emission reductions, which will ultimately be transformed into individual incentives.

  Personal strength may seem small, but the accumulation of less will make more.

Tao Lan, general manager of Beijing Green Puhui Network Technology Co., Ltd., said that in the context of "dual carbon", the impact of personal behavior on climate change has become an increasingly important focus of the international community.

  The lower the number of pollutants, the more difficult it is to reduce emissions

  Technology will be the main way to solve the "dual carbon" problem

  At present, although it is impossible to completely eliminate the haze, the blue sky has increasingly become an indisputable fact.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the average PM2.5 concentration of 39 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas and the Fenwei Plain was 62 micrograms/m3, a decrease of 39% compared with the same period in 2016, a significant decrease.

The annual average concentration of PM2.5 in Beijing has achieved "30+" for the first time, which is only a single digit distance from the national standard.

But the lower the pollutant value, the more difficult it is to reduce emissions.

Li Xiang, Director of the Atmospheric Environment Division of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment, said: “With the completion of large-scale engineering governance tasks, the space for emission reduction has been drastically reduced, and the rate of emission reduction has slowed down. The prevention and control of air pollution has entered a critical stage of refined management and social governance. ."

  On November 2, the "Dual Carbon" Governance Forum of the 4th World Top Scientists Carbon Conference was held in Shanghai.

"Technology is the main way to solve the'dual carbon' problem" became the consensus of the participating experts.

In recent years, various high-tech methods have been increasingly used in domestic emission reduction and carbon reduction, which has provided convenience for air governance.

  In terms of atmospheric monitoring and management, at present, my country has established a multi-level and three-dimensional atmospheric monitoring network.

In the sky, satellites conduct macro-monitoring of air quality.

In the air, drones, visual radars, etc. are used for daily monitoring of local areas.

On the ground, there are nearly 2,000 air monitoring stations under national control and more than 3,000 districts and counties, basically covering all districts and counties in the country.

With the development of technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, monitoring networks are becoming increasingly digital and intelligent.

  It is undeniable that the task of reducing carbon emissions in my country is still arduous.

However, the "dual-carbon" target has provided impetus for the development of more low-carbon technologies.

Li Haisheng, Dean of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, said that the key to building a low-carbon technology support system is to combine technological innovation with the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure to help the development model change from factor-driven to innovation-driven development.

  The reporter noticed that in the 2020 National Science and Technology Award List announced recently, many awards are related to low-carbon environmental protection.

For example, the "Nano Confined Catalysis" project, which won the first prize of the National Natural Science Award, contributes to the clean and efficient use of coal.

The use of new technologies can significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in some energy conversion and material synthesis processes using coal as raw materials.

The "Industrial Flue Gas Multi-pollutant Synergistic Deep Treatment Technology and Application", which won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, has solved the current emission reduction problems in the steel, building materials and other industries.

The key equipment for desulfurization, dust removal and low-temperature multi-pollutant adsorption regeneration and treatment processes developed by this project have been demonstrated in some steel, cement and other industries. The flue gas emissions after treatment with this technology can reach the world's most stringent ultra-low emission indicators .

  Hao Jiming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that with the goal of peaking carbon by 2030, it will force a green and low-carbon transformation of the energy structure and a coordinated improvement in the quality of the ecological environment.

By 2035, if the temperature rise can be controlled at 2 degrees Celsius, it can drive about 1/4 of the PM2.5 emission reduction.

  Our reporter Wang Yajing