Early on in Beijing’s winter of pollution-wracked discontent, one of China’s biggest power companies, Huadian, turned off the coal scrubbers at its Datong plants and let emissions of sulfur dioxide, a leading cause of acid rain and respiratory illness, soar to more than four times government standards.
Huadian saved money by turning off the scrubbers, which suck up power. What’s more, Huadian falsified paperwork and sold its electricity at a premium rate that the government offers to power plants with low emissions. Regulators caught the company. Twice.
Beijing is downwind of Datong, and coal-fired power plants like Huadian’s are just one of the culprits for the extreme bout of air pollution here over the winter, when the city’s air-quality index went off the charts that regulators use elsewhere. At a level of 755, U.S. Embassy readings in mid-January were more than twice what the Environmental Protection Agency calls so “hazardous” that people should avoid going outdoors.
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Steven Mufson, Washington Post via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/iPafdfDqR1Q/
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