Energy Consumption
Preliminary estimates show that China's total energy consumption in 2004 approached 1.97 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, up 15.2 percent over the previous year. Of this, coal consumption stood at 1.87 billion tons, up 14.4 percent; crude oil, 290 million tons, up 16.8 percent; natural gas, 41.5 billion cubic meters, up 18.5 percent; hydropower, 328 billion kwh, up 15.6 percent; and nuclear power, 50.1 billion kwh, up 15.6 percent. The consumption of major raw materials included 310 million tons of rolled steel, up 15.1 percent; 12.84 million tons of aluminum oxide, up 9.7 percent; and 960 million tons of cement, up 12.4 percent. The energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP stood at 1.58 tons of standard coal equivalent, up 5.3 percent.

Fresh Water Quality
Of the 413 water quality monitoring sections of the seven major river systems, 41.6 percent of the surveyed sections were of Grade III quality as specified in the national standards for surface water, up 3.5 percentage points over the previous year; 30.5 percent were of Grade IV or V quality, down 1.7 percentage points; and 27.9 percent were under Grade V quality, down 1.8 percentage points. The water quality of Pearl and Yangtze rivers was relatively good while that of Haihe, Liaohe, Yellow, Huaihe and Songhuajiang rivers was relatively bad.

Seawater Quality
Of the 246 offshore monitoring stations, 49.6 percent reported water quality of up to Grade I or II standard, maintaining the level of the previous year; 15.4 percent met the Grade III standard, down 4.4 percentage points; and 35 percent was of or under Grade IV standard, up 5 percentage points. A total of 169,000 square km of sea area nationwide did not meet clean seawater standards, up 19 percent over the previous year. Of this total, 32,000 square km was severely polluted. Monitoring of 15 offshore areas indicated that the ecosystems of major bays, river estuaries and coastal wetlands were moderately or severely bad.

Monitoring of the Marine Environment
In 2004, marine environment monitoring agencies at all levels monitored all sea areas within the jurisdiction of China. This included monitoring pollutants discharged into the sea and mussel watching, establishing 15 offshore ecological control and monitoring areas and further strengthening the monitoring of marine functional zones including marine aquaculture areas, marine protection areas, seawater baths, dumping areas and petroliferous areas. More than 1 million pieces of data were collected by the more than 4,800 monitoring stations. The monitoring results indicate serious pollution among alongshore sea areas, mainly the Bohai Bay, the alongshore of Jiangsu, the Yangtze River Estuary, the Hangzhou Bay and the Pearl River Estuary. Most of the inshore sea areas met the standards of clean water with waters of open sea areas of generally good quality. The main pollutants of the seawater of inshore sea areas remained inorganic nitrogen and activated phosphate. The sediment in the inshore sea areas was generally of good quality while pollutants in seashells in local sea areas were at a rather high level. There were more large and poisonous red tides, mainly in the East China Sea and the Bohai Sea. The environment in seawater baths was generally good. The ecological quality of dumping and petroliferous areas was basically up to standard.

Pollution Treatment
In urban areas, the daily sewage disposal capacity reached 74.02 million cubic meters in 2004, up 11.7 percent over the previous year. The areas of centralized heat supply were 2.05 billion square meters, increasing 8.4 percent. The green coverage of developed areas stood at 32.3 percent, up 1.1 percentage points. The sewage disposal rate in urban areas reached 43.6 percent, up 1.2 percentage points. Of the 319 monitored cities, 132 met Grade II standard in terms of air quality, accounting for 41.4 percent of the total monitored, almost the same as in the previous year; 119 met the Grade III standard, accounting for 37.3 percent, up 5.5 percentage points; and 68 were rated as Grade III minus, accounting for 21.3 percent, down 5.5 percentage points. Of the 328 monitored cities in terms of road traffic noise, 2.1 percent suffered serious noise pollution; 5.2 percent were moderately polluted and 9.1 percent were lightly polluted.

Gradual Progress in Ecological Environment Conservation
The Yellow River's downstream has not run dry for five consecutive years, the Tarim River has continuously transmitted water to the Taitema Lake at its lower reaches to meet an emergency for three years and the Heihe River transmitted water to the East Juyan Lake six times in 2004. The total afforested area reached 7.167 million hectares in 2004. By the end of the year, the state had approved the establishment of 166 national ecological construction demonstration areas and 2,194 nature reserves, among which 226 were state-level ones. The total area of nature reserves was 148.226 million hectares, accounting for 14.8 percent of China's landmass. In addition, 85 national geological parks and 27 geological relics preservation zones were established. Some 49,000 square km of areas were treated through comprehensive anti-erosion projects and 110,000 square km of soil erosion areas were protected.

10 Worst Air Polluted Cities
The State Environmental Protection Administration announced in the middle of 2004 the list of 10 cities with the worst air pollution: Linfen, Yangquan, Datong, Shizuishan, Sanmenxia, Jinchang, Shijiazhuang, Xianyang, Zhuzhou and Luoyang. They are all industrial and mining cities with heavy chemical industry as their pillar industry. The top three cities are coal-producing cities in Shanxi Province. Expanded coke production boosted by substantial price hikes worsened air pollution in these coal-producing areas.

Pollution Treatment in the Huaihe River
A spot meeting on preventing and treating water pollution in the Huaihe River valley was held in Bengbu, Anhui Province in October 2004. At the meeting, governments of the four provinces along the river--Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Henan-- signed a pledge with the State Environmental Protection Administration to cut pollution along the river, which was endorsed by the State Council.

Olympic Environmental Protection Measures
Beijing made several promises on environmental protection during its bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, which won praise from the international community. In the past three years, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has actively fulfilled these promises and the concept of "Green Olympics" is being well implemented in Beijing. The BOCOG has incorporated the idea of sustainable development in its plans. This means incorporating the protection of the environment and resources and maintenance of ecological balance in project construction as well as market promotion in preparations for the Olympic Games. The BOCOG has encouraged the development of green technologies for environmental protection and advocated healthy ways of living and consumption. Beijing has also launched a special program of ecological and environmental protection in the Olympic Action Plan.

Green GDP
Green GDP is an adjustment of the traditional GDP calculations after taking into account the environmental cost of economic activities. It is an index that measures the speed of economic development after factoring in growth quality and sustainability. The State Environmental Protection Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics jointly worked out the "Green GDP Index" system in 2004 and 10 municipalities and provinces including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, Hainan, Chongqing and Sichuan began to experiment with it at the beginning of 2005.