On Jul. 31, Minister Li Ganjie presided over a ministerial executive meeting, which deliberated and adopted in principle the amendment list of Ambient Air Quality Standard (GB3095-2012) and Limits and Measurement Methods for Exhaust Smoke from Diesel Engines of Non-road Mobile Machinery.  

The ongoing Ambient Air Quality Standard has powerfully guided the air pollution control work and helped raise the public environmental awareness, promote the transformation of the environmental management and improve the ambient air quality since the year 2012. However, an evaluation by the Chinese Academy of Engineering suggested the standard is in need of improvement, as its provisions on the pollutant monitoring state are inconsistent with the international practices, which renders the quality concentration of the air pollutants monitored by China poorly comparable with those by the international community.  

Also, the recent three-year clean air action plan issued by the State Council made it specific to amend the ongoing provisions on the monitoring state in order to meet the international standards.  

Therefore, the meeting required that the amendment list be released and the supplementary monitoring methods and standards be formulated and amended as soon as possible, so that all-dimensional and systematic standards and specifications shall be put in place to monitor the ambient air pollutants as per the new monitoring state, and that a necessary meteorological parameter monitoring, recording, and reporting system shall be introduced to make sure of the accuracy of the monitoring data. Moreover, the monitoring apparatus will be updated accordingly.  

The air pollution has been effectively under control since the control action plan was put in place in 2013, as shown by notably lower annual average readings of the air pollutants SO₂, PM₁₀, and PM_2.5. However, the pollution from mobile sources characterized by the air pollutants NO₂ and O₃ has been increasingly serious, and non-road mobile machinery powered by diesel engines has become a major contributor to air pollution. Therefore, it is imperative to amend the Limits and Measurement Methods for Exhaust Smoke from Diesel Engines of Non-road Mobile Machinery as soon as possible, in a bid to step up the regulation over emissions from such machinery.  

Vice Ministers Huang Runqiu, Zhai Qing, Zhao Yingmin, and Liu Hua, Chief Inspector of the CCDI Inspector’s Office and Chief Supervisor of the SSC Supervisor’s Office at the MEE Wu Haiying, and Vice Minister Zhuang Guotai presented at the meeting.  

Other leading officials of the Inspector’s Office and Supervisor’s Office and the principal officials of the internal departments attended the meeting.