Beijing Will Cut Coal Burning and Barbecues in Bid to Fight Smog

September 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Beijing Will Cut Coal Burning and Barbecues in Bid to Fight Smog

The Chinese capital will limit cars, outdoor barbecues and coal burning under new measures to reduce air pollution that exceeded recommended World Health Organization levels by nearly 40 times in January. Coal use for electricity consumption in Beijing will be reduced by 13 million metric tons by 2017 from the 2012 level, while limits will be put on outdoor barbecues in suburban areas and the number of cars will be kept below 6 million, the city government said in a statement today. The restrictions follow 10 pollution control measures that the country announced in June, after levels of PM2.5, the fine particulates that pose the greatest health risk, hit a record 993 in January. At his first briefing as China’s premier in March, Li Keqiang said China’s smog gave him a “heavy heart” and promised more vigorous efforts to fight it. The measures in Beijing are meant to reduce concentrations of PM2.5 by 25 percent to about 60 micrograms per cubic meter in 2017 from last year. The World Health Organization recommends 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 of no higher than 25. The measures announced today also include closing 1,200 companies that generate pollutants and limiting public offerings of companies that violate environmental laws. The city had 5.2 million vehicles at the end of last year, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Sarah Chen in Beijing at schen514@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment