South China's Guangdong Spends Heavily on Air Pollution Control

The desulfuration project with Guangzhou Petrochemical Company of south China's Guangdong Province, with an investment of more than 6 million yuan (about 722,892 US dollars), has been put into service recently.

That is the first project of Guangdong Province in using sold desulfuration technology to limit discharge of sulfur dioxide. With the project in operation, Guangzhou Petrochemical Company, as one of the major polluting businesses in Guangzhou, will less produce 5,000 tons of sulfur dioxide annually, greatly decreasing the air pollution in downtown areas of this southern Chinese city.

The project is part of the "Blue Sky Scheme" Guangdong Province has been undertaking. Under that program, the province will spend 5.7 billion yuan (about 687 million US dollars) in carrying out 18 comprehensively harnessing projects, with 100 major industrial polluting sources to be treated. That will bring about many business opportunities to environmental protection companies.

Guangdong, which was designed to pilot China's reform and open- up drive, has witnessed a fast economic expansion over the past two decades. Along with the economic boom, the volume of air pollutants discharged in the province, such as sulfur dioxide and smoke dust, has kept growing drastically.

As a result, economic losses caused by acid rain on 17 cities in Guangdong register 4 billion yuan (about 482 million US dollars) each year, and some of the cities reportedly have suffered actinic smog, said local sources.

To reverse the situation, Guangdong has decided to step up efforts to improve environment. In accordance with the provincial environmental protection plan for the next five years, 97 percent industrial waste gas will be treated and 90 percent of automobiles in urban areas will meet required auto exhaust standards.

In the plan, limiting the discharge of sulfur dioxide is listed as a major item for harnessing air pollution. According to the plan, the province will ban installation of new small coal- or oil- firing generating units and will ban building of all new oil- or coal-firing power plants in Pearl River Delta and in urban districts and suburbs.

In the meantime, in constructing new major coal- or oil-burning power plants, desulfurating equipment will be compulsory items, while the existing 14 power plants in the province will also undergo desulfuration upgrading in the smoke. By the year of 2010, all coal- or oil-burning power plants in the province will be installed with desulfurating equipment.

In the environmental protection plan, local officials of Guangdong also stressed that they would combine air pollution control with optimizing energy structure, developing clean energy and give priority to development of energy such as hydropower, wind power, solar power and natural gas in the years to come.






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