The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) took
the unprecedented step of blacklisting four major power plants and
four cities yesterday for performing poorly on their environmental
impact assessments (EIAs).
"All new projects launched by the four plants and in the four
cities will be halted," said Pan Yue, SEPA spokesman and a vice
minister. "This is the first time for SEPA to use such a strict
measure to punish whole industries and some local
administrations."?
The four power plants are Datang International Power Generation
Co Ltd, China Huaneng Group, China Huadian Corp and China Guodian
Corp. Of the country's top five power plants only China Power
Investment Corp survived the blacklisting.
The four cities are Tangshan in Hebei Province, Lüliang in Shanxi Province, Liupanshui in Guizhou Province and Laiwu in Shandong Province.
"The cities do not have the environmental capacity to handle
more pollutants," Pan said. "And yet they still develop industries
that consume a lot of resources and produce a lot of
pollution."
Tangshan, for example, has reached its limit for pollution but
it built 70 steel plants last year. Of these 80 percent failed
their EIAs. The plants represented only part of the problems
uncovered by SEPA's latest inspection of EIAs.
Eighty-two projects representing an investment of more than 112
billion yuan (US$14.4 billion) have been found to lack effective
environmental protection measures. Most of them were in the steel,
power, chemical and metallurgical industries.
"China missed its goals of making a 4 percent cut in the amount
of energy it consumes and a 2 percent cut in emissions of
pollutants in 2006," Pan said.
(China Daily January 11, 2007)
