Beijing, November 22:

Giant power plants belching out clouds of filthy coal smoke often spring to mind when people mention China’s worsening air quality. But the

exponential growth of the car industry over the past 10 years has also added enormously to the noxious mix of pollutants swirling across urban centres.

As hundreds of new vehicles take to China’s roads every day, the government is left in something of a bind between enforcing new environmental policies and its long-term development of the economically vital auto industry.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) recently estimated that vehicles produce 79 per cent of air pollution in some of China’s major cities.

Vehicle sales rose by another 25 per cent in the first eight months of this year and are expected to hit nine million for the whole year, up from 7.22 million in 2006.

“It is still a pillar industry,” Ma Fanhua, an expert in clean vehicle-fuel technology at Beijing’s Qinghua University, said. “The government has become more supportive of the industry in the last 10 years.”

But the influence on the industry of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has also become ‘more obvious in recent years’, especially in developing technology for reducing emissions and conserving energy, Ma said.

World governments are heading to Bali, Indonesia, in December to discuss what happens after the Kyoto Protocol — which went into force in 2005 and for the first time imposed mandatory cuts on industrial nations’ emissions — expires in 2012.

“According to the Kyoto Protocol, as a developing country we are not obliged to meet any goals before 2012,” he said. “But as a responsible country, China pays attention to it.” Discussions have dragged on for more than 10 years on the imposition of a fuel tax, which could eventually make costly hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles more attractive to consumers.

A recent commentary in state-run the Oriental Morning Post urged caution and raised obstacles to a fuel tax, including the ‘challenging mission’ for the Ministry of Communications to redeploy its 300,000 staff employed at highway toll stations.

“I heard that the government has no plans to introduce a fuel tax at present,” Ma said, adding that it would take at least two to three years or even longer.

Wu Changhua, head of China operations for the Britain-based non-governmental agency The Climate Group, believes the Chinese government will eventually bite the bullet and introduce a fuel tax.

“It’s more like a timing issue,” Wu said.

Leaders’ speeches at last month’s five-yearly congress of the ruling Communist Party showed that “climate change is now really high on the agenda of political commitments,” she said. Wu expects ‘more efforts’ to promote environmental technology and ‘stronger enforcement’ of regulations.

A new regulation issued last month requires all counties to improve their public transport infrastructure and promote the use of public transport and all non-motorised forms

of transport from April 1 next year.

The government promised to accelerate research, development and production of hybrid, electric, fuel-cell, hydrogen and other alternative power sources and clean-fuel technology for vehicles.

“In the next 20-30 years, I think it will be a multi-fuel scene with petrol, diesel and natural gas all taking a share,” Ma said. “But the hybrid electric car is also a trend.”

Beijing, Shanghai and other affluent, showpiece cities have already begun active promotion of public transport, opening new subway and bus routes, and reducing fares.

On the other hand, officials in Beijing said this month that they had no plans to limit the growth of private cars in the city, which already has 3.1 million vehicles and records an average of 1,000 new registrations per day.

Scientists identified car exhaust emissions as a major cause of Beijing’s air pollution at least six or seven years ago, Ma said.

“Around 2001, before and after we bid for the chance to hold the Olympics, the problem was put into a very important place,” Ma said.

The capital plans to keep many cars off the road and show China’s ‘greenest’ face during the Olympics, yet China has similar internal divisions to the global ones between developed and developing nations.

Less developed inland areas are reluctant to accept national energy policies dictated by the central government, instead “pursuing short-term economic gain at the cost of the environment,” SEPA official Zhao Hualin said recently.

Petrol-driven cars, like coal-fired power stations, remain the foreseeable future in China.