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During my previous post, I touched on Air Pollution in China and found out that increasing car ownership & heavy reliant on the burning of fossil fuel for sources of electricity are the main reason for the smog covering china’s urban areas. The focus on this post will be to explore more on one of the factors, increasing vehicle ownership.
A study was done in 2019 to analyze the reasons for this and the current efforts towards rectifying this issue. There is a gap between vehicle emission control methods and the development of the vehicle industry. The reasons for this are first, there is a huge increase of vehicles and demands for it. As its citizen income increased more are able to afford a vehicle thus increasing the number of vehicles on the road.
As seen from diagram above we can see the increase picks up in the 21st century. This is also happening due to the urbanization of its citizens. Living in the city provides them a need for a motorized vehicle.
Second, there is a problem with its road design. The roads are not designed to meet the expansion in vehicle ownership. Traffic congestion always occurs causing slow traffic. With slow traffic, more pollutants are emitted around the road areas.
Third, is fuel quality. The government does not have the right to design the fuel quality standards. This is managed by a committee with a majority of members that are related to the petrol chemical industry. Therefore their priority would be profit over the environment. It will also take time to improve their fuel quality.
Fourth, as the fuel standards improve, its vehicle standards are not improved simultaneously. Its fuel quality lags behind the vehicle standard. The cars ended up using lower quality fuel in a higher quality engine which still emits pollutants due to its fuel standard.
Fifth, this is an interesting point as I feel that this is something that Singapore is facing too. There is a slow development of clean energy vehicles. Its main focus is on electric vehicles and their hybrid types. However, when they focus on this, infrastructure have to be made to make its usage possible. Infrastructures like car-park with chargers and its outlets have to be built. This takes time.
After going through all these five points. I feel that it is not a huge problem just a matter of shifting priorities. Fuel standards and vehicle standards have to be work on by the same committee where this committee consists of its ministers that are focused on improving its environment. Rather than just focus on building high rise apartments & offices, they should work on improving its road networks at the same time. Lastly, more resources can be put into improving its car-park to make it electric car-friendly. With more of these, the citizens will be more willing to make the swap to at least a hybrid car.
With all in agreement, air pollution can be controlled.
Reference:
Vehicle emission and atmospheric pollution in China: problems, progress, and prospects
16th May 2019
Jin Wang, Qiuxia Wu, Juan Liu, Hong Yang, Meiling Yin, Shili Chen, Peiyu Guo, Jiamin Ren, Xuwen Luo, Wensheng Linghu, Qiong Huang.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526014/
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