A workshop of a biotechnology company in Qianan, Hebei Province, on April 6. This company was transformed from a steel enterprise in answer to the local government's call to develop environment-friendly industries (XINHUA)

On March 31, China and the United States caught the world's attention when they announced, in a joint statement, that the two countries will sign the Paris Agreement, the boldest international climate change agreement to date, on April 22 and "take their respective domestic steps in order to join the agreement as early as possible this year."

The statement was newsworthy for several reasons. First, since the agreement requires 55 countries, representing 55 percent of global emissions, to sign and ratify the document for it to come into effect, getting the world's two largest emitters—that also represent the world's two largest economies—provides a massive impetus for other countries to follow suit.

Second, after helping secure a successful outcome at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, in December 2015, the two are now looking to bring the Paris Agreement into force as early as possible. They also voiced their commitment to working together—and with other countries—to reach the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and hopefully much less.

Finally, the April 22 date chosen by the Chinese and the Americans is significant in that it is the first possible day that countries can sign the agreement. Symbolically, it also falls on Earth Day—when individuals, businesses and policymakers are all urged to lower their impact on the planet.

According to the joint statement by Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama, they "recognize that the Paris Agreement marks a global commitment to tackling climate change and a strong signal of the need for a swift transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient economies."

While this may sound like diplomatic-speak to a casual observer, this is welcome news to the hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens dealing with the effects of carbon emissions—in the form of pollution—that hampers their everyday lives. From wearing a protective mask to saving-up for a high-cost air purifier, dictating whether schools are open and acceptable outdoor activities, both the economic and convenience costs of air pollution continue to rise.

Battling smog

As negotiated in Paris, the global agreement does not come into force until 2020, and there have been many questions raised about what happens in this in-between period. In China, its domestic efforts to tackle pollution come namely in the form of its Environmental Protection Law, which went into effect in January 2015. At the annual legislative sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, referred to as the "two sessions" in Beijing in March that same year, Chen Jining, head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), said that the new law would be no "paper tiger" and would have "real teeth."

Just over a year later, the most visible impact of the law has been in the fight against smog. "There have been improvements in the number of good air quality days, the number of poor air quality days, and year-round PM2.5 levels," Chen said in a press conference on March 11

during the 2016 two sessions in Beijing. According to government data, in 2015, a total of 74 cities—the first wave to implement new air quality standards—saw average PM2.5 levels, the count of very fine and extremely dangerous particles that cause pollution, drop by 14.1 percent year on year. China established a national PM 2.5 standard of 35 ug/m3, or micrograms per cubic meter of air, last year.

While data shows overall annual air pollution improvements, too many days are still well over what the World Health Organization deems "unhealthy," meaning an air quality index (AQI) of 50 or above.

Air pollution was also included as a priority for the Central Government to tackle in the new 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), adopted this March, which sets ambitious targets for air quality progress. It requires hundreds of cities to meet "good" or "excellent" AQI standards 80 percent of the time, meaning that they must score below 100 in the nation's 0-500 scale. The 80 percent target is in addition to an effort to reduce the number of polluted days by one quarter, and to decrease the number of days when PM2.5 exceeds allowable limits by 18 percent.

"In sum, no locality—not even those that have made progress—can stand still. They all will have to reduce pollution further," wrote environmental researchers Deborah Seligsohn and Angel Hsu in an analysis of the plan. "This still won't leave China's cities genuinely clean; after all, 80 percent is a far cry from 100 percent, but it is a major step forward."

Moreover, the Central Government has called for any new coal-fired power plants to have "ultra-low emissions." As the country's major cause of pollution, a fall in China's coal consumption for two years in a row raised hopes that the demand for the pollutant may have already peaked. The reported consumption of coal fell 3.7 percent year on year in 2015, following a 2.9-percent decline in 2014, according to figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics released on March 1. Yet coal is still the nation's major source of energy, accounting for 64 percent of all consumption.

In order to meet its domestic goals—and international climate change obligations—China must accelerate the switch to renewable energy sources. According to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report titled China's Future Generation 2.0, released in December 2015, China already has the technology and potential to generate 84 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources by 2050. Doing so would cost much less than continuing to rely on coal, while drastically reducing carbon emissions. The report also showed that coal could be completely eliminated from the country's energy mix by 2050, or even earlier.

In 2016, the Central Government is focused on reducing over-capacity in the coal and steel sectors, with a plan to reduce the production of coal to about 1 billion tons, and to limit steel production to between 100 and 150 million tons. Yet limiting the use of coal will be necessary in order to reduce emissions.

In transitions to relying on renewable power sources, the world's most populous nation could simultaneously pursue bold energy efficiency initiatives to reduce demand for electricity. When asked a question by Beijing Review about where China could see some "quick wins" in this regard, Anders Hove, who serves as the associate director for China Research at the Paulson Institute, discussed the importance of energy use reduction, specifically by companies and state-owned enterprises, who are still the largest energy consumers in the country. He also talked about the importance of introducing—and enforcing—strict standards for new buildings, including winter heating efficiencies and better construction materials.

Such efforts, especially when paired with standards and incentives for new products and building construction, could reduce annual power consumption in 2050 by almost half, according to WWF estimates. Lo Sze Ping, CEO of WWF-China, said that the data shows "what is possible. To achieve this highly efficient and renewable powered future, political will is the critical ingredient."

National vs. local priorities

A March 3 paper by China Dialogue, an organization that focuses on environmental issues in China, noted that the country's 2015 percentage of natural gas and non-fossil sources of energy—such as hydropower, nuclear and wind—increased 0.9 percent from 17 percent in 2014. Yet "coal-fired generation capacity increased by almost 8 percent, suggesting that there is a mismatch between some provinces—which are now responsible for issuing permits for new plants—and the Central Government, which has acknowledged the problem of overcapacity in polluting industries."

Much of the reluctance toward the implementation of national efforts to reduce smog on the local level is based on preferences for well-established local industries that provide jobs and pay a good portion of local tax revenues, according to several policy analysts. In China, that industry is coal, and its presence can be seen, smelled and felt in most corners of the country.

At a March 15 public discussion titled War on Pollution at the Bookworm bookstore in Beijing, panelists were in consensus that much of the impact of the Central Government's policies to try and curb coal emissions—and therefore smog—will depend on the implementation of the national goals on a local level.

"Some of the war on pollution efforts are starting to take effect," stated Li Yan, a panelist and the Deputy Program Director at Greenpeace, a global environmental organization. While absolute coal use has started to decline, she emphasized the lack of implementation of these standards, saying it varies widely from place to place. She cited the coastal areas of Beijing, Tianjin and the Yangtze River Delta as the regions that have the most pressure to get rid of surplus capacity and reduce smog. "But in some other places it may be a different story," Li said.

One section of the updated Environmental Protection Law calls for daily, accumulative fines which are imposed when the standards are breached. The Law significantly increased the cost of those breaches, by removing the previous cap on fines. Daily fines were since imposed in 715 cases in 2015, with a total of 569 million yuan ($86.2 million) collected. But the application of fines has been patchy at best, and it was widely reported in Chinese media in March when a provincial environmental protection body fined a factory in Jiangsu Province the equivalent of just $90 for dumping waste water.

Hove, who also participated in the panel discussion, agreed that while the Central Government is very serious in its efforts, many of the policies may not be reaching the local level. He made the point that in terms of evaluating progress versus goals regarding air pollution, there needs to be distinctions made between measuring emissions and ambient PM2.5, or the pollution that can be measured in the air at a specific time and place. He further explained that a local official should not be held responsible for the pollution that collects in their province or district, as that can be severely affected by changing weather patterns; instead they should be held responsible for the level of GHG's that their region is emitting. As Hove illustrated, only then will the incentives for local governments have meaning, transparency, and teeth.

Junjie Zhang, an associate professor of environmental economics in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, said in a China File article that after the new revision of the Environmental Protection Law, China is expected to cultivate a "new normal" of law abiding firms, in which "it becomes less and less likely to tolerate noncompliance in environmental regulations."

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, in his report to the NPC at its opening session on March 5, said, "We must ensure that the newly revised Environmental Protection Law is strictly enforced, that those who emit pollutants beyond the limit allowed by their permit or without a permit are severely punished, and that those who knowingly allow such violations are held to account."

Copyedited by Jordyn Dahl

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