(Photo : Beijing central business district)

The clean-air project issued on Monday aims to reduce and limit the amount of coal consumption used in the city's energy mix to less than 10 percent. Emissions coming from the coals are a huge contributor to Beijing's pollution, particularly smog, with highest rates during the winter time.

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The plan is to cut the rate of fine particle matter to only 60 micro grams for every cubic meter by the year 2017. This would mean a total of 25 percent decrease from levels that were traced in 2012. The project also targets to lessen the city's total coal consumption by 13 million metric tons for the next five years.

The local government of Beijing has already been taking measure to cut coal consumption for the past 14 years. Based on data from the China Environmental News, an agency managed by the Environmental Protection Ministry, the city will cut seven million tons from its coal consumption within the project's time frame.

During the project launch on Monday, there was a laundry list of suggestions on how to cut coal consumption. Among the suggestions include placing a quota of coal to districts, making sure that Beijing's electricity and gas supplies are always available, and changing the concentration of sulfur on standard coal.

The government also predicts that decreasing the consumption of coal will help increase the demand for natural gases to up to 24 billion cubic meters by 2017.

Zhou Dadi, China's Energy Research Society vice-chairman mentioned that the supply in natural gases inside and outside of China is becoming more promising due to natural gas sources have been discovered recently.

By 2014, four gas powered electric plants will start operation in Beijing, and is expected to cut the total coal consumption by around 9.2 million tons.

Another solution the local city is looking into is using high quality coal, which has lower sulfur content,  instead of low quality coal used in the rural and suburban area s before the heating season of 2016.