Greater efforts required to say goodbye to coal

Editor's note: The government has attached great importance to curbing air pollution since a wide swathe of China was hit by heavy smog for more than 20 days in January 2013. In an interview with Xiakedao, the official WeChat account of People's Daily, Tao Guangyuan, executive director of the Sino-German Renewable Energy Center, comments:

We have been battling smog for six years, but many of us still wonder how effective our air pollution measures are, where the PM 2.5, a major source of smog, comes from, and whether our local governments and enterprises are serious about trying to reduce air pollution?

When talking about smog treatment, we must first have scientific standards to judge which measures are good and which are not. There is also the cost factor. The treatment of air pollution, if in the wrong way, may consume huge amounts of money. Funding for alternative energy supplies must be carefully considered, given that different regions across China are in different stages of development and thus have differentiated energy demands.