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Air pollution in London passes levels in Beijing (2017)
- chatmasta 9y ago> Demand for the [wood-burning] stoves, which cost between £400 and £7,000, has tripled in the last five years – partly down to the savings they can make to energy bills. This raises lots of moral questions. Should London ban wood stoves, effectively increasing costs for some of its poorest inhabitants? Burning wood might produce pollutants, but how does the net effect compare to the production of the oil/gas/electricity required to produce the alternative? Of course that production is done off-site, not in urban centers, but it wouldn't surprise me if wood-burning is better for the environment than manufacturing the necessary amount of coal/oil/gas/electricity required to heat the same house.
- Retric 9y agoWood smoke is surprisingly nasty. Standing next to a fire you miss this because it's all rising above you, but it cools fairly quickly and becomes a health hazard nearby. The public Heath costs vastly outweigh the savings. So, banning wood stoves and simply giving people money for something else is a net win for society. PS: I suspect a most wood burning in London is for aesthetics not really need.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoYou can't even compare the two. Even if you burn coal in a plant, you are required by law to use advanced filters that greatly reduce the amount of pollutants.
- DanBC 9y agoPoor inhabitants can't afford £400 for a wood burning stove. Many parts of London are "smoke control zones", and there are already strict rules about what you can or can't burn. Since London has already banned some burning fuel it's easy to add another type.
- Angostura 9y ago> Many parts of London are "smoke control zones", and there are already strict rules about what you can or can't burn. Since London has already banned some burning fuel it's easy to add another type Except, of course - you can buy woodburning stoves specifically certified for use in smokeless zones by the DfE (I know, I have one). It's already prohibited to use non-certified stoves in those areas.
- tyfon 9y agoBurning wood is also CO2 neutral as the forest has captured this CO2 in the last few decades compared to fossil fuel that is accumulated over many millions of years. In Norway you actually get a higher (greener) energy rating for your house if you have a wood stove, and our electrical power almost entirely hydroelectric. The article doesn't say, but the wood pollution is relatively minor compared to diesel etc. This Greenpeace article[1] doesn't even mention wood. [1] https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2016/11/03/causes-londons-air-pollution/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2016/11/03/causes-londons-a...
- varjag 9y ago> In Norway you actually get a higher (greener) energy rating for your house if you have a wood stove, and our electrical power almost entirely hydroelectric. You can possibly get a higher rating when you replace an old stove or an oil stove (parafinbrenner/oljekamin) with "clean-burning" stove, or do I miss something? Otherwise the rating depends on how tight the house is insulated, does it have balanced ventilation and so on. And CO2-neutral sounds a bit hand-wavy tbh. Sure forest captured it only recently, but there's no advantage releasing it back to atmosphere.
- Spooky23 9y agoThe issue with wood in urban areas isn’t CO2, it’s the particulate pollution.
- tyfon 9y agoYes, but if you have electric only and install a "peis" your rating is increased. There are better options regarding particular pollution like the pellet burning oven, but you do get higher rating from wood alone. The CO2 part is not hand-wavy, unless you clear-cut the forest and do not let it grow back. Unfortunately that is what is happening in the rain forests of the Americas.
- Retric 9y agoYou need to harvest and transport that wood, so it's not CO2 neutral. PS: Gas also takes a lot of energy to refine and transport so it's worse than the direct CO2 produced during combustion.
- zimablue 9y agoIt's posers not poor people, generally. The partly due to the savings is a red herring.
- gambiting 9y agoI used to live in a house with a wood burner in the living room and central heating where individual radiators didn't have any regulation - so actually, in winter it was cheaper to stay in the living room most of the time, burning couple logs of wood every few hours rather than heat up the entire house using central heating. Quite significantly so actually.
- revelation 9y agoThe poorest inhabitants in London don't live in the kind of home where they can install a wood stove. They rent and likely have central heating.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoPoor people in London don't burn wood, they use prepay meters which cost a fortune to top up. This is because: a) Wood burners are expensive and trendy b) It takes time and energy to get and/or chop up wood (you really need a car to pick it up at least) c) You need a good credit rating to get access to cheaper gas/elec tariffs, so prepay meters is usually the only thing a poor person can qualify for Banning wood burning stoves would be a great move overall. If wood-burning is really that much more efficient (it isn't) then let's centralize it and burn wood in the power plants instead of coal. I really wanted a wood burner (it's fun to burn wood, creates a tremendous amount of heat and looks awesome), but now I know the environmental costs I won't get one - it's completely irresponsible to use one in a city.
- thriftwy 9y ago> prepay meters Wow, that's a nasty way to treat your citizens! How it's done usually: Any apartment or house has a meter. You have to pay by KWh from time to time. If it doesn't get paid, it's eventually owner's problem. Bonus points for multi-range electricity meters and central heating. Extra points for central heating with heating meters (OK just kidding about this one).
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago> Wow, that's a nasty way to treat your citizens! How do you mean? If someone can't afford to pay, they need to seek help. Why should this suddenly become the problem of the owner of the building? Why should she be the person crediting another person? There are different ways to solve this problem and shifting it to the owner isn't the most fair one.
- thriftwy 9y agoThe assumption here is that a random tenant won't afford to pay for electricity. Which isn't a huge bill as bills go. I'm kind of shocked by a culture which assumes that kind of thing. Also, electricity is a kind of neccesity so cutting someone's electricity is a bit like leaving them endangered, which is arguably a crime. The owner of a building has to collect rent anyway, so I don't see why electricity would be an especial concern.
- mannykannot 9y agoThe UK stopped the urban use of coal in the 1960s in order to deal with the infamously lethal smog problem.
- IronCore864 9y agoOK finally we are not the worst
- Nux 9y agoWood burning stoves should be banned outright in the capital. It's mostly hipsters and posh people using them anyway, they will survive.
- laurent123456 9y agoThe article mentions that it's "partly down to the savings they can make to energy bills". It's time to tax them accordingly then, people shouldn't be allowed to pollute the air just to save money.
- Feniks 9y agoI used to think this too but heating costs are expensive in the UK. My own country has a very large supply of natural gas in the ground so its pretty cheap to get through the winter. The UK has to import.
- carlmr 9y agoDon't they also need to import wood? I can't imagine they have such oversupply. On the other hand they have oil in Scotland.
- Angostura 9y agoThat would be simple to do. When I bought my wood burning stove (I'm a posh hipster) I bought one that was specifically certified by the Department for the Environment to be used in smokeless zones (of which London is one). Either the certification/regulation isn't stringent enough (although I can't see smoke emerging from my chimney from the adjacent lost room when it is running) or people are fitting non-DfE approved stoves, in which case enforcement needs to be improved. Of course, I originally got the wood burner to minimise my CO2 footprint - the same reason I bought a diesel rather than petrol car.
- nwah1 9y agoI applaud your effort, but generally speaking it looks like we were lied to about the diesel efficiency claims. And CO2 is not the only pollution consideration. There are all sorts of carcinogens, heavy metals, and particulates that can be released when burning anything.
- arekkas 9y agoThis is from Jan 2017, please add that to the title. I thought this was about today.
- sctb 9y agoThanks, updated.
- whatyoucantsay 9y agoBeijing gets much higher than 190, though... many times over 500 (some from Jan 2017, the month of this publication, even). See historical data from the US embassy in BJ: http://www.stateair.net/web/historical/1/1.html http://www.stateair.net/web/historical/1/1.html
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoJanuary and February 2017 were particularly bad for Beijing last year. This year they have definitely been trying harder with getting coal out of the near capital zone in rural Beijing and surrounding Hebei. Still gets polluted a lot, it’s the orange and red zone regularly, but much much better than last year (doesn’t get into the purple and dark red zones as much as it used to).
- hiharryhere 9y agoThe picture halfway down with the jogger is extremely misleading. That's not smog, that's a foggy morning in a comparatively rural area over 60 miles north of London.
- PakG1 9y agoI would love to see a summary of what's been happening in Beijing. What are their policies? Because Beijing air has apparently been awesome these days for the entire winter. My friends who live in Beijing confirm this for me. In the dead of winter, this would have been unheard of even one year ago. http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ http://www.stateair.net/web/historical/1/1.html http://www.stateair.net/web/historical/1/1.html
- carlmr 9y agoI was in China last year. The airplane newspaper had a few articles devoted to how the government is trying to reduce pollution in many different areas. But one of the big measures seems to be to go hard after corrupt local officials that let industries pollute for money.
- lumberjack 9y agoBeijing uses very heavy handed policies, that would be harder to implement in London. For example: cars with numberplates starting with A-M are banned on certain days of the week and the rest are banned on other days of the week. They also confiscated wood burning (or was it kerosene?) stoves and although it lessens the pollution, lots of poor people are living in freezing homes because of that.
- theBobBob 9y agoI know that Paris had similar restrictions on cars a few times recently. If your car had an even number it could be used on one day, odd on another. If I remember correctly they also made all public transport in the city free for them days too.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIt was coal, no one uses wood or kerosene to keep warm, but almost everyone was using coal in the villages.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThey got rid of coal for not only energy and central heat generation, but also for the villagers in and near Beijing who used it to keep warm during the winter. Coal in the form of dirty personal furnaces was where most of the pollution was coming from. The downside is that they had to import more natural gas for heating, and there has been a shortage (china has no significant NG production, it’s all imported). Villagers without gas access have been using electricity, and the subsidies they were given to do that haven’t been enough to offset cost, so there has been some unrest. The government is backing off on this aggressive approach a bit for other areas (e.g. in Hebei where the problem has been worse than BJ). If you look at the aqicn history, the air still isn’t that great in BJ, they spiked red for a few hours today for example. Still a massive improvement, but Beijing is also still at the mercy of the wind when it comes to clean air (but a purple before being a red now is really good, I can deal with a red, but not a purple).
- kbart 9y agoAlarmist article. It's more like "best day in Beijing / worst day in London" conditions comparison. See the data, last year average air quality is 3 times worse in Beijing[0] than London[1]. 0. https://air.plumelabs.com/en/year/beijing https://air.plumelabs.com/en/year/beijing 1. https://air.plumelabs.com/en/year/london https://air.plumelabs.com/en/year/london
- gvurrdon 9y agoMy house has a stove. Perhaps I am simply a poseur for having one, but it does get the most-used room in the house up to a comfortable temperature whilst the rest of the house can be left cooler to save on central heating bills. The house was built without central heating, electricity or indoor plumbing and so had fireplaces and had a stove when I moved in. If, like me, you can wander around the woods near your house (it's not in London, or any other city) and gather fallen branches to cut up and put in a wood store to season, then fuel only costs the time taken to gather and cut it. There are other sources of free wood as well but I still have to pay for it from time to time. Any savings from free fuel are offset by the fact that the chimney has to be swept at least once a year, ideally twice or more. Getting a sweep in gets the job done a lot more cleanly and quickly but costs about £50-60 a time.
- Asooka 9y agoPlease don't burn wood, or if you do, use a gasifier/pyrolysis stove. They are also called "smokeless" stoves. Smoke from a normal wood fire is a really awful pollutant.
- gvurrdon 9y agoPerhaps when such stoves are readily available for home use, and the time comes to replace the old one I've got, that might be worth doing.
- m_t 9y agoApparently, Angostura found one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324367
- gvurrdon 9y agoI suspect that's one of the ones that runs on certain sorts of solid fuel, such as this: https://smokecontrol.defra.gov.uk/appliances.php?country=s https://smokecontrol.defra.gov.uk/appliances.php?country=s AFAICT these still require chimneys but presumably the smoke they produce contains fewer particulates than that produced by wood in a standard stove, hence allowing them in these zones. Presumably Asooka was thinking more along these lines: http://brightstove.com/ http://brightstove.com/ This looks very interesting, but appears not to be available.
- Arnt 9y agoThose stoves are "responsible for 10 per cent of winter pollution", the article mentions. What makes up the other 90%?
- indescions_2018 9y agoAir purification at environmental scale is actually an excellent space for new startups ;) In NYC, there are initiatives for electric vehicle adoption. But we would still require an array of "scrubbers" to remove existing containments.
- osrec 9y agoI've spent time in both these places, and based on my experience, London is nowhere near as bad as Beijing.
- forkLding 9y agoexperience is subjective, numbers is objective, so what maybe one kind of experience is different for someone else
- avcdsuia 9y agoThat's because the Beijing authorities simply ban burning coal and limit the gas supplement in nearby areas. check this out http://www.xinhuanet.com/local/2018-02/05/c_1122367331.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/local/2018-02/05/c_1122367331.htm
- kwhitefoot 9y agoHow come they need to introduce 'no idling' zones? Where I live (Norway) idling is banned all over. As far as I know idling for more than one minute is banned all over Scandinavia. Doesn't stop inconsiderate drivers doing it of course. In fact it is already illegal in the UK. Here is a quote from Confused.com: "Stationary idling is an offence under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988," ... The Act enforces rule 123 of the Highway Code which states: "You must not leave a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while that vehicle is stationary on a public road." And doing this can incur a £20 fixed-penalty fine under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) Regulations 2002.
- acd 9y agoDiesel cars shut down their emission cleaning when its gets cold. In Germany BMW, Volkswagen had todo a "upgrade" fix but in other countries there wont be a cold weather update. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/06/europes-diesel-cars-may-be-spewing-nox-more-flagrantly-than-previously-thought/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/06/europes-diesel-cars-may... https://dieselnet.com/news/2017/08vda.php https://dieselnet.com/news/2017/08vda.php