Chinese province admits homes left freezing after overzealous coal ban
Hebei province acknowledges it massively exceeded its target to ban coal use for winter heating and switch to gas and electricity, helping create fuel shortages
The northern Chinese province of Hebei has admitted that it massively exceeded its target in an overzealous ban on the use of coal to heat rural homes, switching nearly 30 per cent more households to natural gas and electricity than planned.
Beijing’s initiative across 28 cities in the north to help tackle air pollution by halting coal use for heating has led to gas shortages and families shivering in the brutal winter cold.
The policy affects millions of people, but has backfired after severe nationwide gas supply shortages and delays in pipeline infrastructure left families, schools and even hospitals without heating in freezing temperatures.
Amid a public outcry, the government had to relax the coal ban last week, allowing areas that had not converted fully to gas to return to coal burning for heating.
Hebei, which is responsible for over half of the target set by Beijing’s plan to phase out coal heating, confessed it had pushed the programme too aggressively and far exceeded the target set by the provincial government at the beginning of the year.
Jiao Shiqing, an official with Hebei’s housing and urban development department, said on Monday that the province had switched 2.3 million rural households to gas and another 200,000 to electricity this year – 27 per cent more than the target of 1.8 million.