Hi everyone, continuing from the previous post, I will now look into the burning of coal & fuel being one of the main reasons for air pollution in china.

The burning of coal is divided according to residential & industrial. With an increase in immigration from rural to the urban areas, some still adopt its traditional methods of using coal as a fuel for stoves and heaters. With the traditional method, there are no proper chimneys to remove the smog from indoor to outdoor causing indoor pollution. There are efforts on solving this but due to the rapid increase of immigration, the efforts are not able to catch up with it.

As for industrial, we have constantly discussed, that the electrical energy needed to operate mainly comes from burning of coal. So the main question is here why are they relying on sources of energy that are emitting pollutants and non-renewable.  Firstly, there is still a low demand for energy from a renewable source, due to its cost and unfamiliarity. Secondly, the government is not enforcing it and still making it an option and only encouraging its citizen, therefore they can simply say no to it and continue with something that is cheaper and familiar.

I feel that more can be done if they make changing their citizen mindset a priority.  All the different groups, organizations & ministers involve need to come together and come out with a solution that all can work on and tackle this issue. I feel that China has the capability to be a major player in reducing air pollution if they are able to collaborate as a nation. China is able to do it as evident by their efforts in combating Covid-19.

In my next post, I will be looking at some solutions we as ordinary people can do to reduce air pollution.

Reference:
Environmental health in China: challenges to achieving clean air and safe water
Junfeng Zhang, Denise L. Mauzerall, Tong Zhu, Song Liang, Majid Ezzati, Justin Remais
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210128/

Politics of Renewable Energy in China
25 January 2019
https://www-elgaronline-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/view/9781788118149/9781788118149.xml