It’s a quiet, frosty morning in Beijing’s financial district, when one of the city’s buses pulls up to pick up awaiting passengers. A light hum—instead of the proverbial engine roar—breaks the early-morning quiet, as commuters file in on the “blue-logo” bus—one of 6,584 electric buses forming part of Beijing’s public bus network.

Beijing is one of many Chinese cities that has embraced electric. In just eight years, Shenzhen has become the first city in the world to electrify all of its 16,359 public buses, with Shanghai and Hangzhou on a similar trajectory.

“Electric buses are just a start, it’s just a baby step,” the Shenzhen-based manufacturer BYD said, which is a manufacturer of electric vehicles. “In the future we also want to electrify taxis, trucks and all other vehicles.”

China has become a leader in electric transit, owning 99 per cent of the world’s 385,000 electric buses, a figure that’s expected to swell to 600,000 by 2025. What this means is that the country is not only leading the global market in electric mobility, but making hefty gains in reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions nationally.

The source of this extraordinary growth lies in the particular mix of politics, technology and economics that has manifested as China’s fight against air pollution. Led by the capital city of Beijing, this 20-year journey has touched every sector of the city’s economy, and significantly affected the lives of its 21 million residents.

GDP in 1997

GDP in 2017

1078 % increase

Population in 1997

73%

+ Population in 2017

Vehicles in 1997

335%

+ Vehicles in 2017

Early years

The 1990s were a time of growth for Beijing, not only in population—almost 13.6 million— but in industry and coal too. As the number of cars on the road soared to the one million mark, so did the headlines around the world about the city’s impenetrable smog.

“The air is bad—you can read it in the newspapers,” Zhang Jiyan, a roadside vendor in downtown Beijing told The New York Times in 1998. “Look, you can't even see tall buildings a few streets from here.”

“The air is bad—you can read it in the newspapers,” Zhang Jiyan, a roadside vendor in downtown Beijing told The New York Times in 1998. “Look, you can't even see tall buildings a few streets from here.”

The Beijing Municipal Government decided enough was enough and launched a set of urgent measures to tackle air pollution. It also began publishing weekly air quality reports. The measures set a comprehensive track for stopping air pollution at the source. It included laws and enforcement mechanisms, systematic planning, strict local standards and a high level of public engagement.

The campaign involved all sources of pollution: from coal combustion to construction to household fuel burning. But the transport sector was an important part of the problem—and the solution—as population and car ownership in the city continued to rise.

By the early 2000s, pollution gases such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter began to trend downwards. With the eyes of the world on Beijing for the Olympic Games of 2008, strict, temporary measures were announced and city officials launched their first major push for cooperation on air pollution across the region. The result was relatively clean air for the competitions. But the blue skies didn’t last during the winter time.

“In the winter of 2012, we suffered several severe pollution episodes,” said Liu Xin, Programme Director for Environmental Management at Energy Foundation China. “From the central to the local government, from industry to citizens—everyone came to hate air pollution,” he said, adding that the government finally “saw this as a major issue we needed to resolve”.

Action Plan

Beijing announced a five-year action plan in September 2013. The plan, which acknowledged that Beijing’s air pollution had become “severe”, aimed to deliver dramatic effects, to both safeguard people’s health and promote long-term, sustainable growth.

The plan set specific targets, tightened emissions standards—ahead of national ones—and closed important loopholes in enforcement. Some of the plan’s most important elements targeted the transport sector.

For instance, local authorities instituted a city-wide lottery on license plates for anyone that wanted to purchase a new fossil fuel-burning car. Those wishing to buy an electric car, however, were able to obtain a plate more easily, encouraging citizens to switch to cleaner modes of transport.

The plan also required old, polluting cars to be scrapped, and increased the frequency of inspections for those that were still on the road. It also tightened standards on emissions from diesel trucks.

The plan also required old, polluting cars to be scrapped, and increased the frequency of inspections for those that were still on the road. It also tightened standards on emissions from diesel trucks.

Finally, it focused on controlling the flow of truck traffic through the city, by ordering lorries to use the beltways to bypass the heavily populated areas.

China, which was once considered the "Kingdom of the Bicycle," with bikes dominating most streets, saw many people switch to cars as dramatic economic growth and urbaniation came with an increase in indvidual wealth, contributing to a deterioration in air quality. Through the plan Beijing authorities reintroduced bike-sharing schemes, to try and once again increase the city's bike use.

“For any short trip, people just ride their bicycles,” he said. “It’s so convenient and people love that.” He also stressed that the city subway system is now longer and more convenient, with roughly 700 kilometres of network in total. “Many people use it to get to work,” Liu said.

Off the roads, the plan focused on limiting the use of coal-fired boilers, providing people with cleaner fuels to burn at home, and restructuring industry to reduce emissions. It also aimed to prevent dust pollution by repairing degraded ecosystems in and around Beijing, while increasing the amount of green spaces within the city.

This all came at a substantial cost. Beijing’s budget to fight air pollution jumped from just over 3 billion yuan (US$434 million) in 2013 to more than 18 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion) in 2017.

Cleaner air

By the end of 2017, cleaner air was visible. The annual average PM2.5 concentration in Beijing had dropped to 58ug/m3, down 35 per cent from 2013. Meanwhile, concentrations of sulphur dioxide had dropped by more than 93 per cent from 1998 levels and nitrous dioxide had fallen by nearly 38 per cent. Heavy pollution episodes were becoming less frequent too, and, when they did occur, they were less intense.

“Winter of 2017 was a moment of triumph and a milestone for the city of Beijing in our war against pollution,” Chen Tian, Director-General of the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, wrote in his foreword to the UN Environment report. “Decades of hard work and mounting investments by the municipal government paid off with a dramatic reduction in air pollution.”

The road ahead

While Beijing has come a long way from its peak smog years, officials know they still have more to do.

“At present, the PM2.5 concentration in Beijing fails to meet national ambient air quality standards and far exceeds the levels recommended by the World Health Organization,” said Yu Jianhua, Deputy Head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment. “Solving all these air quality issues will be a long-term process,” he said.

Indeed, Beijing’s concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and PM10 concentrations are above national standards, and ozone pollution in the summer is a growing concern. To tackle these and other lingering issues, the city is in the throes of another air pollution push, outlined in its 2020 Action Plan. Just as ambitious as its predecessor, the plan aims to reduce the number of heavy pollution days by 25 per cent from 2015 levels. At the same time, the national government has announced its own plan to tackle air pollution, bringing the fight for clean skies to 82 cities across China.

“Understanding Beijing’s air pollution story is crucial for any nation, district or municipality that wishes to follow a similar path,” said Joyce Msuya, Acting Executive Director of UN Environment. Adding: “The city’s experiences offer lessons that can apply in almost any context.”