00:00Laurie Muller-Wurter is Senior Fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute and Lead Analyst for the Center for Research on
00:07Energy and Clean Air.
00:09For over a decade, he's been closely following emission and air quality trends in China.
00:14Laurie, welcome to the program. What do you make of these new standards that China's introduced?
00:21If you think about a city that has just barely met the current standard of 35 micrograms, and now they
00:31have to get down to 25 in the next five years,
00:37that's a very significant tightening, a 30% reduction in the levels of this dangerous pollutant.
00:47And that's going to require broad-based action because China's brought the levels of BM2.5 down by one-third
00:57nationwide,
00:58even more than that in the most polluted areas over the past decade.
01:04So there is no low-hanging fruit left to pick, but it really requires a strong action on coal-fired
01:09fire plants, industries, transportation,
01:12even sectors like agriculture to achieve this.
01:15You mentioned industry there.
01:16How do you balance the demands of industry with trying to meet stricter guidelines like this?
01:23China's already committed to peaking CO2 emissions before 2030,
01:29and likely targeting an even faster peak or plateau in coal consumption.
01:36So that already means that industrial coal consumption can't grow anymore.
01:43And that's an opportunity to bring pollution levels down.
01:51It's been – the challenge for China has been that as long as fossil fuel consumption goes up,
01:56it has been a race between improved pollution control technology and increased fossil fuel use.
02:02But now that fossil fuel use is finally bound to come down as clean energy investments grow,
02:09then that means that these factors are finally working in the same direction.
02:15The WHO guidelines, five micrograms per cubic meters, is that achievable?
02:23Well, that's going to be very close to zero man-made emissions in China,
02:32because that's already what you have as the natural background.
02:37The key thing is setting milestones and targets that are achievable so that you keep improving air quality in a
02:47perceptible way year over year
02:50and five-year plan after five-year plan and gradually approaching that.
02:55But if you think about China targeting carbon neutrality,
02:59then that means that most of the sources of man-made air pollutants will need to be eliminated as well.
03:06So that's really the only way that you get to those levels.
03:15Laurie Mulliverta is a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
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