Beijing bans cars and vehicles that fail to meet emission standards

Beijing is stepping up efforts to fight pollution and this includes a new ban from the road on cars and other gasoline-powered vehicles that fail to meet the National Emission Standard II, starting January 1st next year.

Under the new rules outlined by the Xinhua news agency, the vehicles will be banned from entering the city’s Sixth Ring Road, according to the municipal environmental protection bureau.

Beijing currently has 5.57 million vehicles, which discharge 700,000 tons of pollutants annually. Vehicle discharge is the top cause of pollution in the city, accounting for 31 per cent of the total, the government says.

Beijing currently imposes the National Emission Standard V for vehicles, which similar to the Euro V standard in Europe.

The government maintains that, with each new standard, actual pollutant amounts dropped by 30 to 50 per cent per vehicle, although fuel is still high in sulphur levels and accounts for nearly all the PM2.5 small-particle pollution in the city.

Beijing scrapped 1.44 million old vehicles between 2011 and 2014, with more than 90 per cent of those buying new cars.

On a personal note, the new rules mean the end of the road for this correspondent’s Beijing Jeep, which hails from the year 2000 and gets only one star on the emissions scale, rather than the required two stars.