Shanxi residents relishing clean-energy improvements

Greener transportation and power-generation methods have locals living better than ever

While showing his photography works of local scenery, amateur photographer Zhu Mingyuan from Xiaoyi, Shanxi province relished in the atmosphere.

"Now in the city, the air is fresher, the plants greener, and local residents have a happier mood than before," Zhu said. "The sky here used to be gloomy and gray."

Du Zhanmei, a 66-year-old villager in Qingxu county in Shanxi, said that in previous years, heavy fog and haze haunted the county in winters.

"But more recently, we have begun to enjoy more blue skies and better weather, even in the peak of winter when coal use is at its highest," Du said.

As an important energy and industrial production hub in China, Shanxi has mined 19 billion metric tons of coal over the past seven decades, helping shore up the sustainable development of the Chinese economy, according to the local government.

Yet an economic structure with excessive dependence on coal mining has handicapped Shanxi's overall development and caused pollution.

To cope with the issue, the province has made strides in reforming its energy supply, consumption, technology, and cooperation and innovation mechanisms, aiming to forge an advanced energy system.

Keeping close to Shanxi's reform in the energy system, Zhao Yangsheng, a professor of mining engineering at Taiyuan University of Technology, is committed to researching exploitation technologies of next-generation energy, including coalbed methane and oil shale, to realize low-carbon and clean energy development and use.

Zhao and his research team have developed a technology for exploiting the oil shale, which he said will lead to a technological revolution in exploiting the oil shale and inject momentum into Shanxi's energy reform.

Achievements made in fostering the province's energy reform can be found in cities and counties, as well as in enterprises in Shanxi.

With more than 8,200 fully electric taxies put into service, Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, is the first city worldwide to realize the electrification of all its taxies, according to the local government.

Qinyuan county of Changzhi city in Shanxi has witnessed the operation of 166 wind energy-driven generators, which can generate 482 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year.

Compared with thermal power generation in generating the equivalent electricity, the wind energy-driven generators can save 172,000 tons of coal per year and cut 131,000 tons of dust, 480,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 15,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 7,100 tons of nitrogen oxide each year.

The wind power generation system in the county has generated significant economic, social and environmental benefits, the local government said.

Lu'an Group, one of the leading coal enterprises in Shanxi, takes advantage of advanced technologies, turning pollution-intensive high-sulfur coal into a "treasure", offering a clean, efficient and low-carbon solution of utilizing such coal in the province and the country.

Through technical processing, the coal company has established five high-tech industrial chains of high-sulfur coal and produced 180 models of fine chemicals.

Shanxi's coalbed methane extraction has accounted for more than 90 percent of the country's total. The installed capacity of new energy power generation in Shanxi has exceeded 20 million kWh. The province also has the largest scale of photovoltaic power generation in China.