This year, Zhongshan enlarges “Pollution Fuel Restricted Zone” to the whole city after designating ten towns and districts, including Shiqi District and East District, as restricted zone in 2013.

Energy-intensive and high-polluting construction projects will be severely restricted from now on. Within the “Pollution Fuel Restricted Zone”, newly-built boiler and furnace are  only allowed to consume renewable energies such as natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas and electricity. Biomass briquette-consuming boiler and furnace must be equipped with special fuel-burning equipment.

Meanwhile, all currently-built high-polluting fuel facilities (except coal-fired cogeneration units of enterprises’) must be eliminated by June 30, 2019 and switch to clean energies such as natural gas, shale gas, liquefied petroleum gas and electricity or switch to centralized heating.

Statistics provided by Zhongshan Environmental Protection Bureau shows that Zhongshan has seen improved air quality since the “pollution fuel restricted zones” were designated. The city’s average annual concentration of PM2.5 dropped 31.3% to 33 microgram per cubic meter in 2017 from 48 microgram per cubic meter in 2013.