Over the next five years, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Finance will spend CNY 47.9 billion ($7.7 billion) to improve the city’s air quality. Beijing will especially target pollution from coal-fired sources, industry and vehicles, and dust. In 2013, the concentration of particulate matter sized 2.5 µg or less (PM2.5) was 89.5/m3, whereas the World Health Organization has indicated that the maximum concentration should be 35 µg/m3. The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau plans to reduce the concentration of PM2.5 to 60 µg/m3 by 2017, and the Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection projects a decrease to concentrations of no more than 35 µg/m3 by 2030. The government has recently taken steps to meet this goal by fining companies for practices such as improper emissions monitoring, high levels of smoke exhaust and not covering coal dumps. Industrial sources are responsible for 18% of Beijing’s pollution, and the city plans more than one hundred projects to reduce it.

Source: Ministry of Environmental Protection, The People’s Republic of China