State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA)

November 29, 2007

Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan have made several important instructions requiring the acceleration of the development of the indicator system, monitoring system and examination system for emission reduction (hereinafter referred to as the Three Systems). The Circular of the State Council on Printing and Distribution of the Comprehensive Work Program on Energy Saving and Emission Reduction [No.15 Document of the State Council (2007)] also presents clear requirements. The Three Systems are composed of two components: "hardware" and "software". Here, "hardware" refers to the enhancement of the capacity building in four areas, i.e. on-line automatic monitoring of key pollution sources; supervision monitoring of pollution sources; environmental supervision & law enforcement; environmental statistics and information communications. At present, their development goes smoothly. "Software" refers to the management approach of each system that standardizes the ways in monitoring, analyzing, checking and examining emission reduction data. On November 17, 2007, the State Council approved the Implementation Program and Method for the Statistics, Monitoring and Examination of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction. Among them, the Method on the Statistics, Monitoring and Examination of Total Emission Reduction of Key Pollutants developed by SEPA clearly requires the establishment of the scientific, complete and unified statistics, monitoring and examination systems for emission reduction; integration of emission reduction into the comprehensive assessment system for local economic and social development, which serve as an important basis for comprehensive performance examination of collective or individual government leaders. The authority implements the accountability system and "one-vote rejection system".

It is required by the Statistic methods that environmental protection department at basic level obtain the emission data of major pollutants in line with the specified method and submit the statistics to upper environmental protection department according to the unified schedule. After the review by the authority at each level, SEPA will check and correct the data in accordance with unified method. The monitoring method requires that pollution emitting units should, based on practical conditions, report their emissions of major pollutants to environmental protection department with automatically monitored data in dominance. With supervision monitoring, environmental protection department checks the reported emission amount of the units that discharge pollutants and do well QA and QC work. The examination method specifies the examination method of the central government on examining if provincial government finishes its emission reduction task, examination contents as well as specific incentive & punishment measures.

Employing appropriate emission reduction indicators to reflect emission reduction performance, employing accurate statistics and monitoring data to verify emission reduction situation and adopting strict measures to honor emission reduction responsibility are important guarantee measures for the promotion of emission reduction work. The State Council requires that local people's government at all levels take charge the development of the Three Systems within their jurisdiction, strengthen the development of basic capacity, ensure putting in place the funds, resources and each measure, and strengthen the examination, supervision and check on emission reduction responsibility target within the region. SEPA will further intensify its guidance and supervision, track the development of emission reduction, closely coordinate with relevant departments, fully bring the supervision role of the media into full play, and strive for good working environment for emission reduction. In addition, it will strictly carry out the three methods and do well the statistics, monitoring and examination work for emission reduction. Following the principle of "downplay the baseline, identify the increments and check the reduction amount", SEPA carefully do well the check of emission reduction data. According to the criteria of "If the mechanism where environmental protection integrates with socio-economic development at macro strategic level is established, if economic growth mode has changed, if environmental quality has been improved and environmental supervision capacity has been strengthened", SEPA will judge the real achievements of emission reduction work. Moreover, it will set up and improve site-inspection, seasonal dispatch, plan record, data report, information review, early warning, statistics, monitoring and examination systems for emission reduction, make more efforts in implementation and ensure the achievement of national target on emission reduction.

(China Development Gateway November 29, 2007)