A 16 megawatt wind turbine for power generation at sea is being rolled off a production line at an industrial park in Fuqing, Fujian province. Since 2013, LIN SHANCHUAN XINHUAChina has been able to achieve a win-win between socioeconomic development and environmental protection, according to Li Haisheng, president of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences.
On Thursday, Li made a statement about the annual meeting of the heads of national environmental science institutions from China, Japan and South Korea, which was held virtually this year.
Since 2013, when China launched a national campaign to beef up air pollution control, regions across the country have had remarkable improvements in air quality, he said.
He stated that the density of the pollutant dropped by 56 percent in the past 10 years by the 74 major cities that started to monitor PM 2.5 particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less.
He said that the country's efforts to speed up the green transition resulted in a significant improvement as the country's GDP continued to grow at a steady rate.
In China, great efforts have been made to optimize the industrial structure. He noted that China has cut production capacity in the steel industry by 300 million metric tons and in the cement industry by 400 million tons since 2013.
He said that the country has implemented extra-low emission standards in all key industries and has established the world's largest clean coal-fired power supply system.
Renewable energy is a source of energy for the country, and two-thirds of the country's energy consumption is met in the past 10 years.
Li also highlighted the significant contributions from scientific research to air quality improvement, especially the research conducted under the banner of the National Joint Research Center for Tackling Key Problems in Air Pollution Control, which was launched in 2017 under the banner of the National Joint Research Center for Tackling Key Problems in Air Pollution Control.
About 2,900 researchers from 295 research institutions have participated in the work of the center, which aims to eradicate heavy air pollution events in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei province cluster, said Li, who is also head of the center.
He noted that the center has established an integrated ground-air space monitoring and observation network to help analyze the roles of emissions, meteorological conditions, chemical reactions and the cross-regional transportation of air pollutants in heavy air pollution events, and to figure out the causes and sources of such events.
He said the work has helped control the key pollutants of PM 2.5 in the winter and ozone in the summer. Coal-fired power generation, steel, construction material and diesel-powered trucks, as well as scattered, small-scale coal consumption, have been listed as key areas for air pollution control.
He said that the team has worked out detailed lists of emission sources and tailored, differentiated solutions to address air pollution for each of the 28 major cities.
He said that the concentration of PM 2.5 in the region decreased by over 30 percent from 2018 to 2020. The efforts have helped reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by around 200 million tons.