US Expert Suggests on China's Urban Traffic Hard Nut

Editor’s notes: Hal Harvey is the CEO of Energy Innovation LLC, and is the Director of the American Energy Innovation Council, a consortium of prominent US CEOs organized to promote new energy technology.

During his visit to Beijing, CnDG reporter Jiao Meng interviewed him about solutions to China’s urban transportation systems especially in metropolis cities. Here is the full text:

Q: The first question is about the BRT system. It has helped China’s metropolis cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Tianjin to ease the traffic pressure. But also, we saw the Xiamen bus blast. So with China that has the largest population in the world, what should we do more in operating large-scale public transportation means?

A: So, the tragedy in Xiamen could have happened anywhere, it was a crazy man. He could have burned a building, he could have burned a metro, he could have burned an airplane, anything. So this was just a sad, terrible tragedy. But that said, if you build any system too quick, if you don’t pay attention to how you do it and how you design it and how you operate it, you will have problems. I think that public transport is a terrific technology that gives very high speed at very low cost. But if you try to make it too cheap, it will fail. If you cut corners on design, it will fail.

Q: The second question is about vehicle emission. I think for Beijing, this metropolis city, to cover the air pollution the government has implemented very strict rules in oil quality, license issuing, and so on. Many measures. But my personal feeling is that air quality and the traffic has worsened in recent years. So could you give some suggestions to reduce this kind of vehicle emissions?

A: The most progress so far has been made on cars which have clean fuel and advanced engines and catalytic converters today in china. The next big step has to be the trucks. In china, it has taken a long time to clean up diesel fuel, which is what trucks burn. And unless your fuel is clean, you cannot have a clean engine, you can not have a clean exhaust system like a catalytic converter. That’s a big step that has to happen now. I think just 2 months ago the government finally agreed to take self recognition. So this now opens the possibility for to very important changes which would really affect air quality. The first is to require all new trucks to be ultra clean. The second is to require a retro-fit of old trucks with new exhausts, specialized exhaust systems and this would require the government to put in some money as well: refunds. When the US government made these steps, it was the largest benefit to cost ratio of any environmental program in our history. The other major thing has to do with cleaning up industry or relocating industry. Switching from coal to natural gas, and shutting down the oldest most inefficient factories altogether.

Q: The last question is about the regional drawing to control the air pollution. Could you give some examples from the international community to illustrate how to coordinate actions of different regions to get the most effective results?

A: There is a very important concept in our pollution control that has hindered the development in China which is called the bubble. The idea is that you take a natural air of shed, here it would be Tianjin, Beijing, the whole air shed, and you create an enforcement zone for that air shed. A bubble. Now in the law the bubble is that you cannot do anything that adds more air pollution unless you take away even more. So if I want to put in a new factory in Tianjin, or a new dock or highway, I would have to go and find another one to clean up, or shut down, and I have to do that before I’m allowed to build. One requirement of this is that the environmental authorities in every region have to have sufficient power if the environment protection is subservient, underneath economic development, this will not happen. They have to have their own power and control or else things will get worse and worse and worse.