China deploys drones to spy on polluters

BEIJING — China is using drones to spy on polluting industries in its attempts to battle the lung-choking smog that frequently engulfs many of its cities.

Chinese Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection Zhai Qing said drones have recently been used in Beijing, Shanxi and Hebei provinces to check for pollution. These provinces are some of the worst-affected areas of the country, with a high number of coal-fired power stations, steel mills and cement plants.

The unmanned aircraft can cover 70 sq km during a two-hour flight. The state-run China Daily newspaper said they have helped the ministry “resolve” more than 200 environment-linked cases and that it is considering more drone inspections in other areas.

The ministry has four drones, first introduced in 2012 at a cost of approximately US$1.3 million (S$1.66 million), said Mr Yang Yipeng, a ministry official.

“You can easily tell from the colour of the smoke — black, purple and brown — that the pollution is over the limit, because if smokestack scrubbers are operating properly, only white smoke is emitted,” said Mr Yang, in an interview with the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

“There were too many chimneys like these, and the drones also captured pictures of flames in the open air ... and that is still only the tip of the iceberg.”

While the drones are mainly used to gather evidence about environmental breaches, they are also employed to evaluate the performance of local governments in enforcing environmental protection.

“It was very difficult for the law enforcers to collect evidence of violations when they made inspection trips outside Beijing, because locals easily recognise them and polluting factories swiftly suspend production, leaving few traces,” said Mr Yang.

“The drones, on the contrary, can catch them off guard as few people notice their existence.”

However, environmental campaigners say that, while increased monitoring is good, there should be more focus on policy and legal reforms.

“More monitoring and inspections are no doubt the direction to go. In fact, online emission monitoring systems have already been put in place for key enterprises in many provinces in China. Some data have also been gradually disclosed to the public.

“The key here is to ensure these systems actually function and to expand the coverage to other places,” said Mr Li Shuo, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia. The cost of non-compliance for polluters should be higher, he added.

“When the country puts (in) all its effort to win Premier Li Keqiang’s recently declared war against pollution, I would rather ... see one that involves less ‘wartime machinery’ but employs more systematic policy and legal reforms,” said Mr Li.

He had said at the opening of China’s annual Parliament meeting earlier this month that Beijing would make its fight against pollution one of the government’s priorities amid growing public disquiet about urban smog, dwindling and polluted water supplies and widespread industrial contamination of farmland.

Meanwhile, the Environment Ministry has also been testing the possibility of using drones to spray chemicals into the air to disperse smog during times of high air pollution. Almost all Chinese cities monitored for pollution last year failed to meet state standards.

More than 100 hours of test flights have been carried out using the unmanned aerial vehicle developed by AVIC Aerospace, a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corp of China.

The chemical catalysts it sprays freeze pollutants in the air, preventing them from falling to the ground.

A Xinhua report on the AVIC drone on March 5 said the use of the drones would reduce risks and cut costs compared with other methods for spreading catalysts. Agencies