The Olympic Games will help Beijing reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, a leading environmental expert has claimed.

 

China Research Center of Recycle Economy Director Wu Jisong, a senior advisor of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), said pollutant discharge had been sharply reduced since the capital bid for the Games.

 

"The main reason is adjustment of the industrial structure of the city," he said.

 

Service industries, which discharge the least pollutants, now account for more than 70 percent of the gross domestic product of the city.

 

Artificial lake at the Beijing Olympic Stadium

 

The adoption of advanced pollutant-reduction technologies in plants and the increasing use of clean energy resources had also contributed to the reduction, he said.

 

Olympic venues employing the latest energy conservation methods were almost pollution-free and would influence future construction in the city.

 

"The vast forestation campaign for the Games has also led to a reduction in carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas," he said.

 

Beijing was the only provincial-level administrative region last year that achieved a national goal of reducing major pollutants by 2 percent.

 

Speaking at the Nobel Laureates Beijing Forum, Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan said the city will reduce sulfur dioxide discharge by 20 percent and chemical oxygen demand by 15 percent before 2010.

 

(China Daily September 12, 2007)