Lauri Myllyvirta

New Air Pollution Database Maps World’s Most Polluted Cities

India is home to the world’s most toxic cities. Beijing is no longer the global symbol of smog it once was. And there is a staggering lack of air quality monitoring in some countries.

A man walks past a coal-powered steel plant in Tianjin, China. (AP/Andy Wong)

The world’s most comprehensive air pollution database has been updated again, mapping out a picture of a global health crisis that is disparate, changing and in some places just obscure. Compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the statistics on 4,300 cities reveal annual levels of particulate matter, miniscule particles in the air that

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In Bid To Tackle Pollution, China Starts Largest Shutdown Of Steel Factories In History

China is launching its first regional Environmental Protection Bureau to consolidate cuts in air pollution following party conference

A man walks past a coal-powered steel plant in Tianjin, China. (AP/Andy Wong)

Earlier this month and without much comment, dozens of huge steel mills in China stopped or curtailed their operations. In northern China cement plants are preparing to shut down entirely before Christmas. The measures are a part of an aggressive action plan that aims to cut wintertime particulate pollution by 15% year-on-year over the next five

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China Cements Green Energy Dominance, Doubling Own Solar Power Goals

The astounding growth of wind and solar power in China means that the country is on track to generate Germany’s total electricity consumption from these sources by 2020.

A bus moves past by solar power and wind power farms in northwestern China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Oct. 10, 2015. (AP/Ng Han Guan)

China has more than doubled its end-of-decade solar power target, with new installations dramatically outstripping expectation, according to the government’s energy agency. By the end of July this year, China’s solar PV capacity topped 112GW, after installing a stunning 35GW in just seven months — more than twice as much as installed by any

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The NYT Erroneous Reporting On The ‘Coming Coal Boom’

A run through of some of the claims in that New York Time story, and a summary what’s actually happening.

A man walks past a coal-powered steel plant in Tianjin, China. (AP/Andy Wong)

Earlier this week the New York Times ran a story loosely based on the Coalexit report by German group Urgewald, which seeks to identify companies most heavily involved in the coal power industry in order to get financiers to divest from them. Based on this the NYT story presented a collection of claims which suggest the world is on the cusp of a

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China Starts Cancelling Under-Construction Coal Plants

China has taken huge steps this year to slow and stop the runaway coal sector, cancelling approximately 100 GW of projects in permitting stage this April.

A Chinese boy cycles past a cooling towers of a coal-fired power plant in Dadong, Shanxi province, China.

Chinese leaders have called a halt to construction work on 30 large coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 17GW — greater than the UK’s entire coal fleet. This unprecedented move indicates just how serious the Chinese authorities are about bringing the country’s coal power bubble under control. And those 30 plants aren’t the only

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