China's Industrial Pollution, Energy Consumption Task Still 'Grim' - Official

Aug 29 - BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

More than 8,000 Chinese enterprises have been penalized for pollution offences in the first eight months this year - marking a "success" and indicating a "grim" task ahead, said the head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Wednesday.

In a report on economic and social development this year to the 29th session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, NDRC director Ma Kai said, "China's drive to improve energy efficiency and cut pollution emissions has achieved primary success."

Ma told lawmakers the government had strengthened supervision of enterprises with regard to energy-efficiency and pollution, saying dozens of construction projects were permanently closed.

By February, 12 projects that seriously violated environmental protection regulations, had been permanently shut down.

"The government has taken various measures to promote energy efficiency and to reduce pollution and strictly control the expansion of high energy-consuming industries."

Ma said 103 projects, involving total investment of 330.9bn yuan (43.8bn US dollars), that failed to meet environmental standards, had been refused or delayed approval this year.

Small coal-fired generation units with a combined generating capacity of 5.5m kilowatts were closed in the first half.

The government set aside another 10bn yuan (1.33bn USdollars) to improve energy efficiency and cut pollutant discharges, bringing the total annual investment for the purpose to 21.3bn yuan.

"But the energy consumption and pollution is still grim," Ma said.

The industrial added value of high energy-consuming industries, such as steel and nonferrous metals, which accounted for 70 per cent of the total industrial energy consumption, rose 19.7 per cent in the first seven months, 2.7 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the same period of 2006.

In the first half of this year, total power consumption in China rose 15.8 per cent, three percentage points higher than the growth rate of the same period of 2006, and that of heavy industry rose 18.8 per cent, up 4.6 percentage points.

Ma vowed to take strict measures to save energy and reduce pollutant discharges the latter half.

"We will continue to adopt a stricter market access standard for the new industrial projects and curb the blind expansion of industries of high energy consumption and heavy environmental pollution," he said.

"We will accelerate the elimination of outmoded production projects and quicken the development of the service and high-tech sectors, which consume less energy.

"We will strengthen construction of pollution treatment projects and develop clean energy.

"We will continue to urge companies to save energy and reduce pollutant discharges through both economic and legislative means," he said.

The government has set a target of reducing energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan (1,324 US dollars) of GDP by 20 per cent by 2010, while pollutant discharges should drop by 10 per cent.

But energy consumption fell only 1.23 per cent last year, well short of the annual goal of four per cent.

Premier Wen Jiabao vowed in this year's government report that the government would meet the energy saving and pollution control targets between 2006 and 2010 despite last year's setback.

In his report, Me said the overall situation of China's economic and social development is good and China's economy has maintained smooth growth this year.

Progress has also been achieved in the fields of science, education, health, culture, and people have got more tangible benefits this year, he said.

Wu Bangguo, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee attended Wednesday's meeting, which was chaired by the Lu Yongxiang, vice- chairman of NPC Standing Committee.

Originally published by Xinhua news agency, Beijing, in English 0857 29 Aug 07.