Blue sky over Beijing CBD. Photo: IC

The Beijing municipal government issued guidelines on pollution prevention and control on Wednesday, saying the goal is to significantly improve the level of ecological conservation and basically eliminate the days of heavy air pollution by 2025.

The city aims to keep carbon emissions stable with a slight decline, with the average annual concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at around 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2025, and will try its best to further improve, according to the guidelines.

Authorities will also be committed to eliminating severely polluted water bodies with pollution levels that exceed category five, effectively controlling environmental risks and strengthening regional collaborative governance, making the governance system of the ecological environment more adequate, so as to improve the level of ecological conservation.

The plan is guided by Chinese President Xi Jinping's thoughts on ecological civilization, which stresses that building an ecological civilization must be a major task for China as it has grown rich and is becoming strong. A "Great Green Wall" should be built to protect the ecological environment.

As a faithful advocate of the Paris Agreement, China pledged to decrease its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by more than 65 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.

In September 2020, China announced its ambitious targets of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.

The Beijing guidelines on pollution prevention and control also regard the development of a green and low-carbon economy, transition to clean and low-carbon energy and efficient utilization as one of the main priorities.

The proportion of renewable energy in total energy consumption will reach 14.4 percent by 2025, and the transition from coal, gas, oil consumption to electricity consumption will be gradually realized, read the guidelines.

The promotion of clean energy will be carried out in key industries and areas, including the electrification of public transport and official vehicles, and the realization of clean transport in key industries such as petrochemicals and automobile manufacturing, as well as in key areas such as airports. 

According to the guidelines, Beijing's ecological environment is expected to improve fundamentally by 2035, along with a green way of working and living widely recognized in society, a steady decline in carbon emissions, significant progress in carbon neutrality, and the completion of building an ecological city with blue skies, clear water and forests.

Global Times