Chongqing- The city's energy consumption per unit of GDP declined 15.8% from the 2015 – 2018 period, only a short distance from the 16% decrease objective of its 13^th Five-Year Plan, which concludes by the end of 2020. It has already achieved better than expected energy consumption goals for the past three years. According to a press briefing of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission on 4th November, it might even become one of the country’s first few provinces and municipalities to report above-quota performances for five consecutive years.

Chongqing Guoyuan Port

Energy Intensity, usually calculated as units of energy consumption per unit of GDP, is a commonly used measure of an economy's energy inefficiency. High energy intensities indicate a high environmental and ecological price for converting energy into GDP; therefore, low energy intensity is an ideal indicator and objective for developing a green and sustainable economy.

“During the ‘13^th Five-Year Plan period (2016 - 2020), Chongqing has been intensifying the supervision and regulation of energy conservation in key sectors, pushing for the overall fast decline of the city’s energy intensity and maintaining its growth at a reasonably slow threshold,” said Lin Li, head of the Resources and Environment Department of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission. “As of the end of 2019, the city’s overall energy intensity dropped by 15.8% compared with that of 2015, much better than the nation’s average, which stood at 13.2%.”

Other than that, Chongqing has also made high strides in the fields of swage treatment capacity and green industry development, part of the highlights of the city’s key projects during the past few years, according to the commission’s press briefing, which was to provide regular updates on the city’s progress of the 13^th Five-Year Plan.

By 2019, the city’s domestic sewage treatment rates for urban and rural households reached 94% and 82%, an increase of 4% and 7% from 2015, respectively; the city’s domestic garbage innocuous treatment rates for urban and rural households reached 100% and 95%, an increase of 1% and 5% from 2015 respectively.

For the rapid and healthy development of the city’s green industries, an “Action Plan of Chongqing Municipality on the Integrated and Cluster Development of Green Industries (2015 - 2020)” were carefully and promulgated and rigorously implemented. The city’s green industries' turnover jumped from 50.3 billion yuan in 2015 to 103.2 billion yuan in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 20%. Its contribution to Chongqing’s GDP also rose from 3.2% in 2015 to 4.38% in 2019, making the city’s green industry development increasingly a bright growth engine.