Beijing's smog was about 10 percent better in 2016 compared to the year before, and the local government will set up a police team to supervise businesses and punish illegal polluters to build on this progress, the Beijing Morning Post reported Sunday.
The capital will also strengthen the joint smog control mechanism of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the report said, citing a government work report released at a meeting during the 14th Beijing Municipality People's Congress that began on Saturday.
Beijing aims to cut coal usage by 30 percent in 2017. The city will promote clean resources in 700 villages, totally eliminating the usage of coal in all six urban districts and the municipality's rural southern plains, said the report.
Firms all over the city will be required to abandon all coal-fired boilers that produce less than 10 tons of steam per hour, said the Post's report.
Statistics revealed that Beijing's yearly average concentration of PM2.5 - one of the most harmful components of smog - was 73 micrograms per cubic meter in 2016, a decrease of 9.9 percent compared to 2015 but still over two times the national standard, according to a Saturday china.com.cn report.
The china.com.cn report said that Beijing will invest a total of 18 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) on dealing with air pollution in 2017, including building 3,000 public electric car charging posts and weeding out 300,000 motor vehicles.
Beijing authorities unveiled a five-year plan in September 2013 that aims to cut annual coal consumption by 13 million tons and keep it within 10 million tons by 2017, compared with 23 million tons in 2012, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
