Air quality meets goal, density will drop further

Shanghai air quality continued to improve last year, with the average density of hazardous to health PM2.5 pollutant particles dropping 7.7 percent to 36 micrograms per cubic meter from 39 in 2017.

That meets the city's clean air goal of bringing down the yearly average density of PM2.5 to 37 micrograms per cubic meter by 2020.

The density should further drop to below 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2022.

Efforts are still required to fully meet the city's clean air plan, under which heavily polluted days — with an Air Quality Index higher than 200 — will disappear by 2020.

Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center's figures show that two heavily polluted days have been recorded in January last year with PM2.5 being the major pollutant.

Another day of heavily pollution occurred last June with Ozone being the major pollutant.

Water quality and soil environment are the other two major concerns of the city's environment authority.

According to Shanghai Bureau of Ecology and Environment, Shanghai has developed 11 specific action plans covering 11 ecological environment protection related themes.

The "coal cutting plan" foresees that by 2020, Shanghai's consumption of coal will be 5 percent less than in 2015.

The use of coal will be controlled in the iron and steel industries, petrochemical industries and electric power generation.

Heavy polluting vehicles will be forced or encouraged to get off the road, while a long-distance online monitoring system for diesel vans and trucks will be built up to prevent them entering restricted areas.

The environmental management of the city's sources of drinking water will be improved by upgrading monitoring, alarms and emergency responses to avoid pollution caused by transportation, agriculture and manufacturing.

Other plans cover the structural improvement of the chemical industry, the promotion of green energy cars and green transportation at ports and airports, and the protection of Shanghai's wetlands and forests

According to the Shanghai Bureau of Ecology and Environment, 11 working teams have been formed by the city's administrative departments to take charge.