On Nov 9, Haiyang city in East China's Shandong province bid farewell to its coal-burning days with the launch of its nuclear heating project, becoming the first Chinese city to provide winter heating with zero carbon emissions.

The installed capacity for wind power and solar power both exceed 200 million kW, while that of coal-burning power is 1.15 billion kW.

Despite the fact that coal is yet an abundant and relatively inexpensive energy source for the country, China will gradually reduce reliance on coal-burning, a leading cause of emission, while stepping up efforts in fields of carbon trading, he said.

In North China's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Fenhe-Weihe Plain, approximately 25 million households had switched from coal-burning to clean energy for winter heating by the end of 2020.