Liaoning seeking clear air

Liaoning province, once notorious for poor air quality, has started clearing its skies.

Liaoning is one of the old industrial bases in Northeast China and long relied mostly on manufacturing industries, which led to excessive energy consumption and severe environmental degradation.

But the province has witnessed a steady improvement in air quality since 2006, the starting point of the country's 11th five-year plan (2006-2010), according to Wang Bingjie, director of Liaoning's provincial environmental protection bureau.

Last year Liaoning registered 339 days with good air quality, a 26-day increase from 2005, said Wang.

The country set a target of reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, a major cause of air pollution, by 10 percent by 2010 from the 2005 level. Each province was given a certain target and officials were warned they would be sacked if they failed to reach it.

"The target for Liaoning is a 12 percent reduction but we expanded the goal to 15 percent," said Wang.

"Liaoning has accumulated too much 'historical environmental debt', so we need to leapfrog," said Wang.

The provincial government signed emission-reduction contracts with 619 local polluting businesses, most of which are power plants, iron and steel plants and cement factories. Shenhai Thermal Power Company Limited is one such company. Shenhai has three 200 mW heat and power producing units, generates one fifth of the electricity in Shenyang, capital city of Liaoning province, and supplies winter heating to more than one million people over an area of 13 million square meters.

Shenhai used to be one of the biggest polluters in Shenyang. It discharged 18,600 tons of soot in 2005, accounting for 18 percent of the city's total, and 13,900 tons of sulfur dioxide, equal to 11 percent of the city's total.

Shenhai has spent 180 million yuan on sulfur scrubbers and soot removing utilities since 2006 for its three power generating units and has reduced the 13,400 tons emission of sulfur dioxide and 17,900 tons of soot.

The province has adjusted its industrial structure to cut back pollution.

Tiexi, a district southwest of Shenyang's downtown, was home to 90 large- and medium-sized state-owned businesses 20 years ago, about 90 percent of the city's total. The concentration of industry resulted in rows of chimneys belching out choking gas and pungent rivers, which drove away many residents.

The municipal government of Shenyang has since moved most of the polluting factories out of the area and set up a 10-square kilometer green technology industrial park in the Tiexi District for small-and medium-sized renewable energy companies.

Liaoning also spent heavily to restore damage wrought by mining.

Local government statistics show that Anshan Iron and Steel Co, which operates several mines, contributed 74 percent of the dust pollution in Anshan, a city an hour's drive from Shenyang that is sometimes dubbed "the cradle of China's iron and steel industry."

"In the past, when the wind blew, the whole city of Anshan would be covered with dust and smog," said Huang Xiaoyu, director of the security and environmental protection department of Anshan Iron and Steel Co.

But the company has spent 160 million yuan since 2000, to plant trees (covering 9.6 million sq m) in an effort to restore ecosystems in six abandoned mines and stop the clouds of dust, said Huang.

The project is currently 77 percent complete, said Huang.

See related story, Page 13

(China Daily 04/27/2009 page3)