Explained: Lessons from Beijing in clearing Delhi’s air pollution

The Beijing template

The Beijing municipal government started by launching a set of urgent measures to tackle air pollution in the months ahead of the 2008 Olympics. It also progressively began publishing weekly air quality reports and a set of measures to comprehensively track air pollution at the source that included regulations and enforcement mechanisms and an unusually high level of public engagement — something that helped rally public discourse on the compelling need to course-correct.

Importantly, China continued to double down on these initiatives to curb pollution even after the Games. In September 2013, Beijing announced a five-year action plan that acknowledged the Chinese capital’s air pollution had turned “severe” — an important first step. The plan for a national fightback set specific targets, strict emissions standards and tight enforcement and its early focus was on the country’s transport sector.

Beijing started off China’s embrace of electric vehicles, especially public transport, with other Chinese cities forced to follow the capital’s example. Shenzhen became the first city in the world to electrify all of its 16,000 public buses in 2017. Shanghai and Hangzhou followed the same trajectory. Now, China is a leader in electric transit. It has more than 90 per cent of the world’s 800,000 electric buses, and is among the fastest growing markets for electric and hybrid cars.

Air day in Beijing in 2017. (NYT)

For passenger vehicles, Beijing’s authorities instituted a city-wide lottery on licence plates for anyone wanting to purchase a new internal combustion engine car. Those buying an electric car were able to get a plate more easily, providing a clear incentive. The plan required old cars to be scrapped and increased the frequency of inspections for those that were still on the road. The scheme also tightened the rules for diesel trucks, capping emissions and requiring them to use bypasses around heavily-populated urban areas.

Beyond the transport sector, the Chinese plan focused on limiting the use of coal-fired boilers and restructuring industry to reduce emissions through a set of clear incentives and disincentives. It aimed to prevent dust pollution by revamping run-down urban ecosystems in and around Beijing, while increasing the amount of green spaces within the city. Beijing’s policy push also involved eliminating older production capacity, renovating coal-fired boilers and replacing thermal output, especially coal-fired generation capacities, with cleaner alternatives.

This all came at a cost. Beijing’s spending to fight air pollution surged from just over $450 million in 2013 to more than $2.5 billion in 2017, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

‘Lot of low-hanging fruit’

According to Chim Lee, Senior Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit’s China and Asia teams, the emission reductions policies have been comprehensive. “While Beijing — and China as a whole — has made significant progress in reducing air pollution over the past decade, the policies introduced have been comprehensive, addressing major sources of pollution, including transport, electricity generation, industry and construction. In the transport sector, there has been a concerted effort to expand public transport and promote the adoption of electric vehicles. Emission standards have also been gradually tightened,” said Lee, who leads the unit’s research on China’s advanced technologies, industrial policy, energy transition and emission reduction pathways.

China’s reliance on coal in electricity generation and industrial production has decreased, while the use of renewable energy has increased, Lee told The Indian Express in an interview earlier this year. Pollution standards for many industries have been strengthened and heavy industries are generally encouraged to relocate outside the capital. “During days of particularly severe pollution, authorities implement emergency measures, such as restricting the number of vehicles on the road and temporarily shutting down polluting factories. That said, tensions have risen in recent years as coal is considered vital to China’s structural energy security, and heavy industries are integral to the economies of specific regions… A lot of Beijing’s measures can be applied elsewhere in China — and indeed they were — but also the rest of emerging Asia. There are often a lot of low-hanging fruits,” Lee said.

According to Chengcheng Qiu, China policy analyst at the Helsinki-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the country’s “war on pollution” since 2013 has shown tangible results. “From 2014 to 2022, average levels of PM2.5 dropped faster than in any other country, according to the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index. Last year, nearly three-quarters of the country’s cities had average PM 2.5 levels below the national standard limit. Taken together, the level of PM 2.5 in China’s cities was 36% lower than it had been in 2015. This success followed a range of measures, including retrofitting coal power plants,” Qiu said.

In India, it’s the opposite. As Delhi’s air quality deteriorates, many thermal power plants in its 300 km radius continue to operate without flue gas desulphurisation or FGD systems, which are critical for reducing sulphur dioxide emissions. Sulphur dioxide reacts with other compounds in the air to form air particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM 2.5) or less, which are not visible to the naked eye.

In October, a high-level meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office red-flagged vehicular pollution as among the key reasons for the stubborn smog choking the national capital region. States and UTs were told to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, expand charging networks and intensify enforcement, The Indian Express reported last month.

China’s efforts at managing air pollution have hitherto focused on the eastern parts of the country. The national air pollution action plan that the country’s State Council issued in 2013 set PM 2.5 targets for cities clustered in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, and in the deltas of the Yangtze and Pearl rivers. In 2018 came another action plan. This plan continued the focus on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze delta, and included the Fenwei Plain on the middle reaches of the Yellow River. (The Pearl River delta was dropped due to its long-term compliance with the national standard.) According to Qui, these three regions all have an energy mix dominated by coal, and significant air pollution issues connected with heavy industry.

But there is also a new emission problem now in China. While in the first quarter of 2025, eastern China’s overall air quality improved, Qiu noted in a CREA paper that pollution rose in provinces to the south and west of the country. PM 2.5 levels in Guangxi, Yunnan and Xinjiang were substantially higher than a year earlier, at 32%, 14%, and 8% respectively — largely the result of heavy industry, such as steelmaking and coal processing, moving to the south and west of the country where energy is more abundant.

That, now, is the new challenge for Beijing.