Hello everyone, today I will be looking into China experiencing a rise in air pollution as the country ease restrictions on mobility. This is blog post serves as a continuation from the previous post on COVID-19 in China and its air quality.

China’s air pollution has exceeded pre-COVID 19 levels as more economic activities and daily life resumes. Being the first major economy to return to normalised levels in terms of industrial activities while the majority of the world countries are facing a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, air pollution is seen to be exceeding the pre-pandemic levels. The rebound was mainly attributed due to the kickstart of economic activities in China, particularly in the industrial sectors, after many months of low-pollution (Coco, 2020).

As industrial activity has been resumed, pollution levels for a 30-day period from 16 April were above pre-pandemic levels with ozone levels are close to record highs seen in 2018. For instance, coal consumption at five major power generating companies in eastern China exceeded well-above 2019 levels for the first time in early May. The rebound in air pollution in China is driven by industrial activities and it uncover that as China economic activities resumes, as majority are from highly polluting industries, this would result in higher air pollution recorded which could reach or exceed pre-pandemic levels.

Traffic in Beijing. Air pollution had dropped during the lockdown but is back to pre-pandemic levels (Kommenda & Carrington, 2020).

As China starts to ease their restrictions, industrial activities and traffic has returned resulting in air pollution to spike once again. We can see that the lockdown that resulted in lower emissions of air pollutants was only temporary and hence the climate issue has not gone away (Coco, 2020). Highly polluting industries have been faster to recover from the crisis than the rest of the economy. China’s policymakers need to start making transition and prioritising clean energy to reduce the emissions of air pollutants from highly pollutive industries (Kommenda & Carrington, 2020). Thus, as we can see that a drastic stop in industrial activities and use of automobiles have reduced air pollution, this means that there is an increasing need and attention to decarbonise industrial activities and transport.

References:

Coco, F. (2020, May 7). Air pollution returns to parts of China as Covid-19 lockdown ends. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3083303/air-pollution-returns-parts-china-covid-19-lockdowns-end-and-people. 

Kommenda, N., & Carrington, D. (2020, June 3). Air pollution in China back to pre-Covid levels and Europe may follow. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/03/air-pollution-in-china-back-to-pre-covid-levels-and-europe-may-follow.