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On Aug 29th 2015, China’s president Xi Jinping signed and issued Presidential Decree No. 31, which is the latest version of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution. The law will come into force from Jan 1st, 2016.
In spite of the very short public consultation window, the second draft amendment of the law has stirred massive controversy and received a lot of feedback, which reflects the frustration of industry and the disappointment of the public at China’s worsening air pollution problems.
Singing from Different Hymn Books.....
There are numerous regulations, standards and measures in China regulating all kinds of atmospheric pollution and industrial emissions. The authorities must take all these regulations into account during regulatory enforcement and inspection. On the other hand, the industry also has to prepare and comply with requirements from a variety of different regulations.
To make things worse, there are conflicts between these requirements. Take coal fire power plants for example. The accumulative output of China’s coal power plants is about 4 trillion Kwh. Sulfur dioxides (SO2) and nitric oxide (NOx) are the main emission. According to the goal set by the “12th five years plan”, the annual emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide should be 8 million tons and 7.5 million tons, respectively. However, there is a national standard, specifically GB 13223, which is called Emission Standard of Air Pollutants for Thermal Power Plants. In this national standard, the emission limit of sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide is set as 3.67 million tons and 1.82 million tons. Strangely, if we look in the “Improvement Plan on Coal Fire Power Plants (2014-2020)” which brought up the concept of “ultra-low emission”, we will find that the total emission of these substances is not allowed to exceed more than 1.6 million ton, a requirement which is even stricter than the emission standard in the United States.
Besides the regulations mentioned above, the industry also struggles to understand other requirements from the government, such as the plan on prevention and improvement, the special program on power development, the special program on clean production, the environmental influence assessment, etc. All these regulations and requirements together not only put a heavy burden on the industry, but also cause great confusion for law enforcement agencies and leads to a massive waste of administrative resources.
Changing the regulatory emphasis to encompass overall environmental effect of reforms
The previous version of China’s environmental law was heavily criticized for regarding the emission levels as the ultimate endpoint for determining the success of China’s environmental reforms instead of only part of a broader set of diagnostics used to determine improvements in air quality. A large part of the previous law was solely dedicated to detailing the requirements on emission control figures and overlooked the purpose of these control. The central government assessed the performance of local governments based only on emission figures. As a result, many local agencies deliberately concealed emission figures from superiors when they failed to meet emission limits. Now that the latest version of the law has come out, much more emphasis has been placed on other endpoints. An area which has been warmly welcomed by the public and industry alike is the greater emphasis placed on air quality. According to statements made by Jining Chen, the new minister of environmental protection, who took office this February (previously president of Tsinghua University), August, “The core purpose of the environmental work is to improve the environment. We should reach a balance between environmental quality and emission levels.” He also added that when assessing the inspection and enforcement capacities of local authorities, the primary reference to gauge efficacy was their ability to enforce environmental quality. If environment quality is substandard, the local officials are accountable. On the other hand, if the local authority fails to meet the mandated emission levels but does meet the environmental quality standard, then the emission limit could be loosened.
A Big Step in the Right Direction
The management and assessment of atmospheric quality is considered one of the most important parts added into the latest version of the law. As stipulated in Article 4: MEP and other administrative authorities in central government are responsible for the assessment of the atmospheric and environmental quality improvement goals of the provincial governments. The provincial governments should assess improvements in air quality made by local governments. The assessment result should be open to the public.
Actually the latest version of the law doesn’t achieve complete and absolute explicitness in its regulatory provisions, leaving a certain amount open to interpretation (likely due to the lobbying efforts of both industry and regulatory authorities). However, it does show China’s conviction towards meeting environmental goals.
The chief engineer and vice president of the environmental planning institute under MEP, Jinnan Wang said, “The law should not be only a law, it should be the guidance for the whole society. It shows a path of reform on legislation and I hope the amendments to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution could follow this path.”
The head of the Atmospheric Division of the Department of Pollution Prevention and Control under MEP, Shize Lu said, “The latest version listens to a lot of advices and raises new requirements on fire coal, motor vehicles, VOCs and so on. Next we should focus on the enforcement of the law. This law isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than the previous version. ”
