Pollutant emissions have increased in the first half of the year, the country's top environmental watchdog warned yesterday.

A power plant on the outskirts of Zhangjiakou. More than 1,500 factories in southern China had been closed down in the past three years due to the pollution and environmental hazards they posed.[AFP/file]

Discharges of COD (chemical oxygen demand) and SO2 (sulphur dioxide) increased by 4.2 per cent and 5.8 per cent respectively from the same period last year, said Zhou Shengxian, minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).

The official attributed the rise to rapid economic growth so far this year.

The data, released during a teleconference in Beijing, was based on monitoring of 17 provinces and municipalities. Nationwide statistics will be published after further checks.

In the first half year, investment in fixed assets developed so fast that pollution treatment supervisors were unable to keep pace, Zhou said.

Fixed asset investment expanded by nearly 30 per cent, reaching 4.2 trillion yuan (US$525 billion). About 100,000 projects were launched, including heavy polluters such as mining and auto manufacturing.

"What needs to be focused upon is that some local industries operate seriously counter to environmental requirements," Zhou said.

Ministry figures show that only 30-40 per cent of newly launched projects at county level have passed environmental impact assessment, according to Zhou.

Furthermore, construction of sulphur removal equipment lagged far behind development of high-energy consumption industries.

Of the coal-fired power plants with installed capacity of above 32 million kilowatts built in the past six months, half had no sulphur removal equipment when they started operations, Zhou said, without giving exact figures.

SEPA published environmental standards for construction and management of eco-industrial parks last week. As China's first green standard in this field, the move was expected to push the current development of industrial parks onto an environmentally friendly track. There are currently 18 such parks across the country.

Meanwhile the People's Daily yesterday reported that a new SEPA inspection will target environmental pollution treatment by industrial parks, where factories are concentrated and the possibility of pollution accidents are high.

Raising the green threshold of industrial parks is a step by the country to slow down fixed asset investment, the report said.

(China Daily 08/15/2006 page2)