ABSTRACT
As a symptom of being weak in the rule of law, China has serious problems in implementing environmental policies. After installing a large fleet of sulfur dioxide (SO2) scrubbers in coal-fired power plants, their operation was initially poor, not achieving the intended SO2 mitigation. Like policy making, China’s environmental policy implementation is also highly decentralized and goal-centered. This chapter examines how China brought these SO2 scrubbers to normal operation and then moved to tackle millions of smaller polluters. Multiple measures were taken sequentially to reflect their relative difficulties. Easier measures are taken first to make progress whenever possible. Penalties for noncompliance were raised against coal-fired power plants and their managers. Resource constraints and data manipulation are two crucial problems facing China’s environmental compliance monitoring. The conventional system that is based on monitoring, reporting and verification is strengthened. More resources were made available for monitoring and site inspections, although they were still very much constrained for China’s millions of polluting sources. A new system to actively utilize newly emerged big data technologies is being built to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the environmental compliance monitoring system without demanding significantly more resources.
