The city of Beijing began releasing hourly air pollution data on January 12 to address growing public concern over air quality. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center will publish readings for the levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and PM10 detected by its 27 air quality monitoring stations. The data, released hourly on the center’s website and micro blog, “is provided to better serve the residents of the capital”, said Zhao Yue, Deputy Director of the Center. Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-government organization, said hourly figures will help improve the transparency of the environment watchdog. Later the data might include readings for PM2.5. Beijing has set up more than two dozen monitoring stations to detect PM 2.5. According to official data, the southern part of the city is much more polluted than the northern part. Shanghai will release figures detailing the amount of PM2.5 particles in the air from June, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau announced.

Hong Kong’s clean-air targets will be toughened for the first time in a quarter of a century from 2014, but they will still fall short of World Health Organization (WHO) standards. Environmentalists criticized the long delay in adopting the new objectives and accused the government of taking a half-hearted approach to implementing more than 20 measures identified to improve air quality. Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau said there was an urgent need to update air quality objectives, which had not changed since 1987. The new objectives, which lay down atmospheric concentration limits for seven pollutants, are between 10% and 64% more stringent than existing ones. Yau said the government could not implement the full WHO guidelines at this stage as regional pollution was beyond its control. Instead, targets for three of the seven pollutants will be based on the WHO’s interim targets, which are intended to help territories with high levels of pollution move towards the full targets. For the first time, the air quality standards will include a measure of airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5), but the standards will be in line with the loosest of the three WHO interim targets for PM2.5. A total of 22 measures – including phasing out heavily polluting vehicles, promoting hybrid or electric vehicles, and increasing the use of natural gas – had been identified by the government to help achieve the new standards, and Yau said most of them were being implemented. There will be a three-year transitional period after 2014 to allow construction projects that begin earlier to continue under the old guidelines so they will not be delayed, Yau added. Mike Kilburn at think tank Civic Exchange said he was “extremely disappointed” with the two-year delay in implementing the policy.

Most Chinese cities continued to shirk environmental transparency rules last year, with many industrial regions failing to make pollution data public, according to the Pollution Information Transparency Index, an annual ranking of 113 Chinese cities. Although cities in the Pearl river and Yangtze river deltas and the region covering Beijing and Tianjin saw modest progress on transparency, disclosure was still limited in the vast central and western regions. “The gap between eastern provinces and central and western regions is glaring in terms of pollution transparency, and it continues to widen,” said Ma Jun of Beijing’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which jointly compiles the index with the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. The study concluded that in the past three years, local authorities had moved at a snail’s pace in helping rein in industrial polluters, despite widespread degradation and Beijing’s repeated pledges to promote more openness. The government passed the first national regulation on information disclosure in May 2008. Beijing municipality, which ranked 7th in the transparency index last year, shooting up from 31st in 2010, was praised for a marked improvement in transparency, particularly the regular release of data on industrial polluters. However, Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, Mianyang in Sichuan, Jinzhou in Liaoning, and Zhangjiajie, in Hunan were listed among the worst in terms of granting the public adequate access to such data. Most cities in Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan and Hunan – where emissions of pollutants rose rapidly in recent years – were found to have reneged on their commitment to disclose the information. Shandong, the country’s third-largest provincial economy and the top emitter of sulphur dioxide and highly toxic nitrogen oxide, has done an exceptionally poor job in publishing pollution data, the South China Morning Post reports.

Beijing environmental authorities began releasing hourly air pollution readings for PM2.5 on January 21, ahead of the Chinese New Year. The readings of one monitoring station at Chegongzhuang in Xicheng district were updated hourly with about three hours’ delay on the website of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. Beijing authorities have long measured PM10 levels, meaning particles with a diameter of 10 microns or less. But PM2.5 are considered more critical as these smaller bodies can embed themselves deep in the lungs and even enter the bloodstream. They can cause cancer and extreme respiratory problems. The U.S. Embassy conducts its own monitoring in Chaoyang district, and publishes its PM2.5 readings on Twitter. Analysts applauded the move as a step forward in environmental-information disclosure because residents would be better informed about air quality. The government had fulfilled its commitment, they said, which helped restore its credibility. However, the readings were obtained from only one of the city’s six monitoring stations equipped to take PM2.5 readings. “The readings at one station cannot represent the whole city’s air conditions, but they still serve as an important reference for the public,” said Ma Jun , Director of the non-government Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. A Beijing official said the government had monitored PM2.5 levels since 2006, but the data was collected mainly for research. The government said it hoped to install equipment for taking PM2.5 readings at all 27 monitoring stations and release real-time figures by the end of this year. Beijing plans to plant around 66,000 hectares of forest in the next five years to help curb levels of PM2.5. A blueprint for combatting air pollution says forests should cover more than 25% of the city when the planting is completed. Beijing produces 200,000 tons of nitrogen oxide a year, half of it from vehicle exhausts. Half a million new vehicles were registered in the city last year, but 230,000 older ones were removed.

ConocoPhillips has agreed to pay CNY1 billion to compensate for the damage caused by the June oil spills in the Bohai Bay. ConocoPhillips, which has been held accountable for the spills in the Penglai 19-3 field, and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), parent of its Chinese partner in the field, have reached an agreement with China’s Ministry of Agriculture to resolve issues related to the oil spills. The money will be paid as compensation “to settle public and private claims of potentially affected fishermen in relevant Bohai Bay communities,” ConocoPhillips said. Chinese fishermen sued ConocoPhillips and CNOOC for losses caused by the two oil spills, which released more than 3,000 barrels of oil and mud. As part of the agreement reached with the Ministry of Agriculture, ConocoPhillips and CNOOC will also allocate CNY100 million and CNY250 million, respectively, of their previously announced environmental and ecological protection funds for natural fishery resources restoration and preservation.Thousands of fishing families have been affected, with the industry’s economic losses estimated at several billion yuan, but attempts at gaining compensation have been so far unsuccessful. Jia Fangyi, a lawyer who has made several unsuccessful attempts at litigation on behalf of some of the fishermen, condemned the deal, both for the sums involved and how it had been made – in closed-door negotiations between the Ministry and the oil companies. The Hebei and Liaoning provincial governments will distribute the compensation among affected fishermen.The Penglai 19-3 oil field is China’s largest offshore oil field, with daily production of about 160,000 barrels. The two oil companies didn’t say when the field could be restarted.