The top official in China's northern province of Hebei, one of the country's most polluted, "has vowed to use the staging of the 2022 Winter Olympics to drive efforts to cut smog, promote clean energy and ease dependence on heavy industry," according to Stanway & Chen of REUTERS.
The city of Zhangjiakou, around 200km from Beijing, "will stage skiing and snowboarding events during the 2022 winter games, awarded to China last year."
But the plan "has fueled concern, as Beijing is prone to air pollution and Hebei was home to China's seven smoggiest cities last year, largely because of its dependence on heavy industries, such as coal-fired power and steel production." Provincial Communist Party Chief Zhao Kezhi said that "Hebei would work to meet targets for cutting cut industrial overcapacity, coal consumption and air pollution." He said,
"We must use the staging of the Winter Olympics as an opportunity to stimulate economic and social development, speed up our transformation and upgrading, expand effective investment and strengthen poverty alleviation." Hebei "aims to cut coal consumption by 40 million tonnes over the period from 2013 to 2017 and slash its 2013 levels of small particulate matter in almost half by 2020." It "will also reduce annual crude steel capacity below 200 million tonnes by 2020." Zhangjiakou "plans to boost total renewable electricity capacity to 1.28 gigawatts by 2017." China "has repeatedly pledged to hold an environmentally-friendly Winter Games" (REUTERS, 3/28).
