The vexed issue of clearing the filthy air

The level of air pollution in big Chinese cities shows how much China has paid environmentally for its economic growth of the past 30 years. Several weeks ago the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a plan on air pollution that details efforts the country will make over the next five years to improve air quality by drastically cutting pollution, especially in and around Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.

The country's bad air can be attributed to many things, but the three main steps that need to be taken to reduce it are obvious: reducing energy consumption, changing the structure of the energy industry and increasing the supply of clean energy. To those ends, among the measures the government is taking is a pledge to build no new coal-fired power plants in these areas.

The plan also focuses on reducing coal consumption in eastern China, which has enjoyed particularly high economic growth and accounts for a large part of the country's energy demand. If cleaner energy cannot meet growing energy demand in this region, fossil energy resources, especially coal in the west of the country, will be needed to generate electricity.