Stories of Coal Phase-Out

Bringing them to the attention of the international audience adds their experiences to the stories that are more widely known and well-documented, such as Germany’s Energiewende (Heinrich Boell Stiftung, 2013) and the experiences that IISD has analyzed in detail: reform of the coal sector in Poland (Suwala, 2010) and the complete phase-out of coal-fired electricity in Ontario (Harris, Beck, & Gera [...] When preparing for the Olympics—following the themes of green, technological and humanitarian Olympics— the local government was determined to use this opportunity to green the city and to improve the environmental quality by integrating environmental, technological, economic, regulatory and administrative measures. [...] The public’s demand for translating APEC blue to a permanent Beijing blue places higher pressure on the local government and officials, and this would be a major driving force for the government to input more effort and resources and to take more progressive actions pushing forward the reforming of the fossil fuel-dominated energy system. [...] For the healthy development of the industry, coal mine enterprises are required to continue with mergers and acquisitions to reduce the number of old, unsafe mines; to improve work safety; and to protect the environment. [...] NDRC and Ministry of Finance introduced preferential measures on finance and taxation to support the upgrade of the safety technologies of the merged coal enterprises.