Authorities released a plan on Wednesday mandating the heavily polluted cities of Beijing and Tianjin and the province of Hebei to introduce more new-energy buses in order to reduce air pollution.
According to a plan released by seven departments that include the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission, the country aims to bring in 20,222 new-energy cars into the public transport system of the region from 2014 to 2015.
The plan projects that by the end of 2015, new-energy buses will comprise at least 16 percent of the total number of buses in the region. Charging posts for the environment-friendly buses are expected to be as many as 19,657, according to a report by Global Post.
In the third quarter of this year, the Chinese capital and eight of its neighboring cities account for the majority of the 10 Chinese cities with the worst quality of air in the country. The region composed of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei registered an average of 45 days of being badly affected by air pollution in the said quarter.
Reports point to ozone and PM2.5 as the main culprits behind the poor air quality in August. The region is again expected to suffer from smog beginning Thursday, according to the local observatory.
The plan to introduce a significant number of new-energy buses in the region is among the latest measures taken by the government in the fight against the alarming problem with pollution, which has raised public concern significantly in the past weeks.