A coal-fire stove provided heating for Zhao Yaoqin's courtyard
bungalow in a Beijing hutong all her life.
This winter, however, the stove has disappeared from the
66-year-old's life, an electric radiator taking its place beside
her bed, the product of a government-aided initiative to promote
clean energy in the national capital.
With the Olympics to be staged in Beijing next August, the city
is determined to eliminate the use of coal within the Third Ring
Road that circles the city before the Games. The project to replace
the stoves with electric radiators has been part of the effort.
When the city's four-month long heating season started on
Thursday, coal-fired stoves, cited as a big source of pollution in
the metropolis, have disappeared from some 20,000 local households
like Zhao's bungalow in the inner city "hutong" -- traditional
imperial-era alleyways that date back centuries.
"We used to boil water or bake bread on the stove," said Zhao,
sounding sentimental to the disappearance of the coal furnace from
her life.
The pensioner has long understood that an electrical heater
would relieve her from that familiar choking smell as well as the
black soot in her bungalow. But the family, which survives on the
government's minimum living allowance, could not afford to switch
to the more expensive electricity for winter heating, not even
after a deadly coal gas poisoning almost took her husband's life in
2003.
Only after 40 treatments sessions in a hospital hyperbaric
oxygen chamber did he escape life-threatening danger.
At Zhao's small 20-square-meter house her family shares a
courtyard with five other households in Xiyizi Hutong in Xicheng
District.
The city currently has about 400-plus hutongs, mainly in the
inner city's Xicheng and Dongcheng (meaning west town and east
town, respectively) districts. The number is down from 6,000 in its
prime during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). With the fast pace of
today's real estate development, there are not many bungalows left
in the city's hutongs.
The population density of Beijing's hutongs is about 49,000
people per square kilometer, nearly triple the city's average of
14,000 inhabitants per square km, and much higher than the 4,000
per km in New York.
In addition, Beijing's air quality monitoring office found that
the emission of sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide from the hutong
areas have been higher than the city's average in winter, mainly
because of the coal stoves. With the project to switch to clean
energy for heating launched in 1999, the emission level of the two
poisonous substances decreased by 42 percent and 44 percent,
respectively, this year from 2001 levels.
Zhao accepted the switch to an electrical radiator when the
government promised it would be no more expensive than coal. An
extra incentive was the temperature-adjustable radiator was
provided nearly free of charge.
In order to make electrical heating affordable, the municipal
government allows those living in bungalows a discount of 0.3 yuan
per kwh of electricity, compared with the market price of 0.48 yuan
per kwh. It also compensates poor families with 0.2 yuan for every
kwh of electricity used.
Zhao said the fee for electrical heat for the entire winter was
usually around 2,400 yuan (US$323) per household. With the
government's subsidy, however, she only needed to pay about 500
yuan, nearly the same price as that for coal.
According to the Beijing Bureau of Environmental Protection, the
project of eliminating the stoves has been reduced by 90 percent
and 70 percent in Xicheng and Dongcheng districts, respectively. A
total of 1,105 small coal-fired boilers for centralized heating
have been converted to natural gas.
The efforts have helped reduce the sulphur dioxide emissions by
10 percent year-on-year, resulting in a level lower than the
national standard of 0.15 milligrams per cubic meter, the bureau
said.
In addition, the municipal government has set tighter
restrictions on construction works and steel and chemical plants to
ensure good air quality.
(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2007)