• Chinese government cracking down on improper monitoring and reporting of emissions from heavy industry

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      Patrick Lavery

      Combustion Industry News Editor

Reuters has reported on the Chinese government’s new push to improve environmental monitoring and reporting practices for air pollution from heavy industry such as steelmaking and coal firing. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has said that one of the problems has been “repeated data forgery and illicit administrative intervention”, and another reported problem is the manipulation of monitoring equipment. New rules were issued last year, and there have been dozens of subsequent cases of misreporting and data manipulation resulting in the punishment of hundreds of officials. One case involving a coal-fired power plant had almost 100 incidents of deliberate interference with monitoring equipment. The government released a statement earlier this month which said the country is aiming for “accurate, genuine, objective and comprehensive” data, and to achieve this it is going to completely separate monitoring organisations from local governments by 2020. Another initiative will be making data from major polluters available in real-time online, a reflection of the seriousness with which the national government is taking the issue.