The air in the capital should be getting a little sweeter with the removal of 40,000 high-polluting vehicles.

The "yellow label" cars were driven off the road one month earlier than planned, sparking celebrations among environmentalists.

However, 40,000 more polluting vehicles are still running and attention is now turning toward getting them off the streets.

The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau encouraged the owners of these vehicles to give them up in exchange for subsidies.

"Yellow label" vehicles are those that have failed to meet the European No 1 standard for exhaust emissions. The vehicles are not allowed inside the Sixth Ring Road.

Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the bureau, said on Tuesday the 40,621 yellow label cars were decommissioned as of Friday.

The announcement coincided with news that the city is only two "blue sky" days away from hitting this year's target of 266 clear days.

Du said emissions pump a wide range of pollutants into Beijing's atmosphere and are a major concern for the bureau. Exhaust emissions have risen sharply because of a fast rise in the number of cars on the city's streets. The total in 2005 was 2.58 million but that has now gone up to 4.6 million.

"Vehicles - especially 'yellow label' vehicles - threaten the city's atmosphere because of their emissions," he said.

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Bureau announced it intended to remove these cars from the Beijing area by offering subsidies to their owners. The policy successfully removed 106,000 cars during the first year.

More than 80 million yuan has been given out so far this year to the car owners.

"The local government has invested 500 million yuan in the past two years on trying to make more people to give up their polluting cars," said Du.

He said he hoped the policy will eventually lead to 50,000 cars being taken off the road this year before Dec 31.

"By then, the total number of eliminated yellow label cars will be more than 150,000, which is equivalent to a reduction of 315 tons of pollutants every day, mainly carbon monoxide," he said.

Currently, there are still about 40,000 heavy emission cars left in Beijing, said Li Kunsheng, director of the vehicle emission management division at the bureau.

"I suggest these car owners get rid of their polluting vehicles as soon as possible before the policy of offering subsidies finishes at the end of December," said Li.

He said the bureau will continue promoting the elimination of high-polluting motor vehicles next year but the plan may be different to the subsidy initiative this year. He said a detailed plan has not yet been made public.

"We are working to implement the European No 5 standard for exhaust emissions in 2012," Li said.

He said the definition of which vehicles have "heavy emissions" is relative and will change as the bar is set higher.

Currently, the strictest of the ongoing national vehicle emission regulations in China is the National No 4 standard, which holds the same emission limit as the European No 4 standard.

Between 1999 and 2008, Beijing upgraded its emission regulations from the European No 1 standard to the European No 4 standard.

The upgrade took European countries 13 years to accomplish.

(China Daily December 1, 2010)