China Environmental Law

For those of you keeping score at home, last year was a good one for China in terms of achieving its energy efficiency and pollution reduction goals. The goals for 2010, I’m sure you remember, are to cut the energy consumption used to generate a unit of GDP by 20 percent and major pollutants emissions by 10 percent from 2005 levels.  Here are the 2007 numbers: 

Xinhua reported that Premier Wen Jiabao announced the figures in his government work report to the First Session of the 11th National People’s Congress on March 10.

Wen attributed the reductions to the nation’s energy conservation and environment protection efforts in the past five years. “We gave high priority to conserving resources and protecting the environment,” he said. China had shut down a large number of backward production facilities, including small thermal power plants with a total capacity of 21.57 million kw, 11,200 small coal mines, backward iron smelting facilities with a total capacity of 46.59 million tons, backward steel plants with a total capacity of 37.47 million tons and cement plants with a total capacity of 87 million tons. Meanwhile, the country launched 10 major energy-saving projects and made breakthroughs in carrying out desulfurizing projects for coal-fired power plants, Wen said.

In order to meet the 2010 goals Premier Wen stated that

The country would focus on energy conservation in key enterprises and construction of key projects, and develop energy conservation and emission reduction technologies as well as clean and renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar energy, he said. Wen stressed pollution control in major river valleys, lakes and regions, including Huaihe River, Taihu Lake and the Three Gorges Project area. “The national standards would have stricter limits for discharge of pollutants in key river valleys,” Wen said. The Premier pledged that 36 biggest cities will have all waste water purified before discharge in the next two years while raising the charges for polluters “appropriately”.

Since the figures are reported as year-on-year figures, when I have the time I will put together a scorecard which includes the 2006 results to see where China is in terms of meeting its 2010 goals.

One interesting bit of information appears in this Xinhua report: “a World Bank report said about 750,000 Chinese die earlier due to air pollution every year.”  The Financial Times reported last year that SEPA and the Ministry of Health “asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths [totaling approximately 750,000] from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials” because the officials were afraid it would get people all riled up.  If the initial report was true, the Chinese position has changed because this figure is now being openly reported in the Chinese press.  As to whether the publication of this number on March 10 has caused any adverse reactions among the populace, I leave that to others to speculate.