MEP have completed the campaign on check and treatment of nearly 1,000 vehicle emission inspection agencies (hereinafter referred to as the inspection agencies) throughout the country recently, for the purpose of straightening up and intensifying the environmental inspection for vehicle emissions, according to a senior official with MEP. The campaign revealed over 200 problems of all sorts, including the violations of laws and regulations and inappropriate vehicle inspection. Measures have been taken to address these problems, including halting operations, making corrections within a specific period of time, making in-situ corrections, and giving warnings and economic penalties, which helped crack down on violations in the emission inspection.

The results showed that the vehicle emission inspection network has been established in our country, said the official. A total of 1,206 inspection agencies have been set up with 3,982 inspection lines, by provinces (autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government) in accordance with the Law on Prevention and Control of Air Pollution, Regulations on the Administration of Vehicle Emission Inspection Agencies, and Regulations on the Administration of Vehicle Emission Qualification Labels. The inspection capacity was enhanced by eleven times from the 2005 level, making a leap-forward development. In the meantime, the environmental authorities at all levels have constantly stepped up capacity building on environmental regulation, built up one state-level inspection agency, nine provincial-level agencies, and 58 prefecture-level agencies, managing to gradually upgrade the vehicle emission control level.

However, the campaign also revealed four major problems, said the official. First, there are poor links in the commissioning of emission inspection. In fourteen provinces, such commissioning is available only in some cities instead of all the prefecture cities, troubling the public with the labor of having their vehicles inspected in a different city. Second, there are prominent problems with the inspection and testing equipment, some of the testing software fails to meet the criteria, the applications for the pre-heating and equipment demarcation are not sound, the pre-heating or demarcation are not carried out in cycles specified by the standards. Third, some of the inspection agencies have poor internal management, emphasize the quality in intensive inspection and quality in brief inspection, and do not pay attention to the testing technologies and equipment maintenance. Fourth, some of the regions have poor environmental regulation capacity for vehicles, are void of a special supervision agency and staff, or effective monitoring system and managerial account book, failing to meet the demand for reduction of vehicle emissions.

The official stressed that the 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development has set out one of the compulsory targets to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions by 10%, while around one third of the nitrogen oxides reduction quotas is on vehicles. As an effective instrument for the environmental management of in-use vehicles, the emission inspection is also one of the decisive moves to reduce nitrogen oxides during this period. The environmental protection authorities are about to take the following measures recently to advance the prevention and control of vehicle emissions. First, they will speed up the commissioning of vehicle emission inspection tasks, set standards for the commissioning procedures, and try to make the inspection agencies available in all prefecture cities in 2012. Second, they will make greater efforts in the check on environmental enforcement, strictly enforce the law on prevention and control of air pollution as well as standards and criteria relevant to the emission inspection, and investigate violations of all sorts. Third, they will strengthen the long-term supervision mechanism, integrate the intensive check with the routine supervision, conduct comparative experiments for equipment at a proper timing, and improve the on-the-job training of the testing staff. Fourth, they will step up the capacity building for prevention and control of vehicle emission, speed up the establishment of the automobile emission monitoring platform and database, and realize the Internet-based transmission of inspection data and granting of eco-labels. Fifth, they will improve the vehicle eco-label management scheme, advance the authorization and granting of such labels, enhance the communications with the public security and quality inspection authorities, and help to develop policies for restricting non-labeled vehicles and yellow-labeled vehicles, so as to consolidate the foundation for the reduction of vehicle emissions during the 12th Five-Year Plan period.