China’s major cities sink into the smog – and the government is taking ever tougher measures to improve air quality. Now the coal consumption is to be reduced drastically.

The smog in China’s cities take times to proportions that are hard to imagine for Europeans. Sometimes even the traffic must be shut down, because the dirty air is so dense that the view extends only a few meters wide.

The Beijing government has now announced a further measure to get the problem under control: The combustion of coal is to be reduced drastically. The consumption have been located in the first half of 2014, down seven percent from the previous year, reported the state news agency Xinhua on Tuesday, citing official data. 2013 came in at 19 million tons of coal consumption in Beijing. By 2017 it is projected to decline to less than ten million tons per year.

In March, China has the “war against air pollution” proclaimed to counter public discontent with the smog. Several outdated coal power plants have already been shut down and replaced by natural gas power plants. Beijing has begun to close hundreds of factories or to resettle and to tighten exhaust standards for cars. In May, the government has announced that it will pull around five million obsolete vehicles off the road.

Beijing’s environment authority said it had shut down already 176,000 cars in the first six months of this year. The sulfur dioxide emissions have decreased by more than five percent over the same period. Since Beijing is administratively merge with Heibei and the port city of Tianjin, also there stricter rules would continue to apply.

[adrotate group=”13″]