"Digital decoding" 33 μg/cube: Beijing's air quality will meet the standard for the first time in 2021

Beijing, January 5 (Reporter Du Ximeng) According to the Central Radio and Television Corporation's Voice of China "News Horizontal" report, the latest data released on the 4th showed that last year's air quality in Beijing achieved full compliance for the first time, and the annual average concentration of PM2.5 dropped to 33 micrograms / cubic meter, reaching the secondary standard. Voice of China "Digital Decoding", interpretation of this issue: 33 micrograms / cubic meter.

33 micrograms \ cubic meters, which is the report card of Beijing's air pollution control last year, compared with 89.5 micrograms \ cubic meters in 2013, the decline of 63.1% has created the "Beijing Blue" in the circle of friends. Yu Jianhua, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment and spokesman, said: "In 2021, the annual average concentration of PM2.5 and ozone concentration in Beijing reached the national secondary standard, respectively, and on the basis of the stable standards of PM10, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, the air quality was fully achieved for the first time; PM2.5 decreased by 63.1% compared with 2013, equivalent to an average annual decline of 7 micrograms per cubic meter." ”

To understand the value of 33 micrograms per cubic meter, several other numbers are needed.

Last year, Beijing achieved 288 good days for the whole year, an increase of 112 days over 2013. From June to September, the average monthly concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air in Beijing remained within 20 μg/m3 for four consecutive months. These figures all mean that the blue sky in Beijing is more colorful. Ma Jun, director of the Beijing Public and Environmental Research Center, said that being able to "see the mountains" is the biggest change that people feel visually.

"The protection of public health is crucial and contributes to the normal maintenance of the order of public production and life." In recent years, autumn and winter often sound heavy pollution warnings, work trips may be affected by some, kindergartens, schools to stop outdoor physical education classes, or even suspend classes. Now living in this city, you can see the surrounding mountains, which can be said to greatly enhance everyone's sense of blue sky. Ma Jun said.

The annual PM2.5 concentration drops below 33 micrograms per cubic meter, and it is also necessary to ensure that the number of heavily polluted days continues to decrease and the peak pollution continues to decrease.

At the beginning of 2013, Beijing and Hebei suffered from more than a week of haze weather, and the air quality index of many places "exploded", and the maximum peak concentration of PM2.5 hours at some monitoring points was as high as 1000 micrograms per cubic meter. Last year, Beijing had only 8 heavily polluted days a year. Yu Jianhua said: "The frequency, peak concentration and duration of heavy pollution days have decreased significantly. In the whole of 2021, beijing only had 8 days of heavy pollution, a decrease of 50 days from 2013, a drop of 86.2%. Heavy PM2.5 pollution in summer and autumn is basically eliminated. ”

However, from the perspective of the depth of air pollution control, the first time to meet the standard is not the end. At present, the total amount of air pollutant emissions in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas still exceeds the environmental capacity, and the improvement of air quality is not stable. At the same time, the space for future emission reduction is even narrower.

He Kebin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Tsinghua University's School of the Environment, said: "Between 2018 and 2020, the four pollutants in the surrounding areas - sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, VOCs and PM2.5 - decreased by 32%, 10%, 6% and 22% respectively. Overall, between 2013 and 2021, the PM2.5 concentrations of peripheral emission reduction contributed 14.4 micrograms per cubic meter, accounting for about 27.3% of the overall decline in PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing. As the local emission reduction potential in Beijing gradually narrows, we have also done some potential analysis, and the overall trend is that the contribution of the surrounding areas will increase, and it is necessary to further deepen regional joint prevention and control. ”

However, 33 micrograms per cubic meter will not be the limit of Beijing's air quality improvement.

In the future, we will continue to improve the air quality in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has made it clear that it is necessary to achieve "pollution reduction and carbon reduction and synergy". In Ma Jun's view, it is crucial to continue to deepen the transformation of regional industrial structure, energy structure and transportation structure.

Ma Jun said: "The surrounding energy structure is mainly coal, and the industrial structure is mainly heavy chemical industry, so the governance behind is actually more difficult." On the one hand, Beijing must carry out the 'one microgram' action, and on the other hand, it must help the surrounding areas to complete the structural adjustment. For example, in this Winter Olympics, Beijing has built the world's leading renewable energy system, and such a transmission system directly imported from Zhangbei in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, is very beneficial to Beijing and very beneficial to driving the entire surrounding area to reduce pollution and carbon. ”

At the same time, the prevention and control of heavily polluted days will become the focus of air pollution control. Wu Jianfeng, deputy director of the Department of Atmospheric Environment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, revealed: "We must strive to reduce the proportion of heavily polluted days to less than 1% through several years of efforts, unswervingly reduce pollutant emissions, combine air quality forecasts, and timely launch some joint prevention and control measures for heavy pollution emergencies to effectively eliminate heavily polluted weather." ”