Shanxi's Taiyuan Promotes Green and High-quality Development and to Build Itself Into a Waste-free City

Taiyuan, the capital of northern China's Shanxi Province, produces nearly two million tons of domestic waste every year. To promote its green and high-quality development, Taiyuan is striving to build itself into a waste-free city by exploiting the potentials of urban wastes, effectively utilizing solid wastes, and, consequentially, ensuring a virtuous cycle of wastes.

In the last decade, this northern city known for its coal reserves has been improving comprehensively the governance of the local ecological environment, with noticeable results in waste reduction. For example, the volume of daily waste disposal has dropped from 6,500 tons to less than 5,000 tons, with a reduction rate of 23 percent, which topped other cities nationwide. The area for centralized heating has increased from 73 million square meters to 218 million square meters, and the main urban area has become a "coal-free area". Moreover, 256,500 residents in the rural area no longer use coal to heat their homes and instead have switched to electricity, natural gas and other means of clean energy, so that the coverage of heating by clean energy reached over 90 percent.

In addition, Taiyuan's garbage is utilized by two major waste incineration plants, with a utilization rate of more than 95 percent, 35 percent higher than the national average. Taiyuan's electricity generation capacity per ton of waste has increased from more than 200 kWh a decade ago to 460 kWh at present. Kangheng Waste-to-energy Plant is one of the largest waste incineration plants for electricity generation in Shanxi, where nearly 1.1 million tons of domestic waste are transformed into electricity every year.