Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi province, will comprehensively enhance its innovation ability and core competitiveness to become a more influential national central city. 

In February 2018, the State Council approved Taiyuan to become an innovation demonstration zone for the national sustainable development agenda. 

To overcome the two bottlenecks that restrict sustainable development – water and air pollution, Taiyuan has implemented 51 projects focusing on water resource conservation, water environment reconstruction, and green transformation of production, living and energy use, which has seen strong results. 

According to the city's latest plan, Taiyuan will take five major actions targeting weak water ecosystems, atmospheric environmental pollution and slow energy transformation process. 

The five major actions are the comprehensive management of mountain ecosystems, water systems, and atmospheric environment quality, comprehensive optimization of urban living environment, and high-quality energy transformation and development. 

There are eight projects targeting the comprehensive treatment of mountain ecosystems. By 2025, Taiyuan aims to complete the ecological restoration of 150 hectares of damaged abandoned land, improve suburban forest parks in eastern and western mountains, start construction on ecological health centers in Yangqu county and Gujiao county-level city, and form a landscape greenway around the city. 

The city will complete 13 projects related to comprehensive water system improvement by means of water ecological restoration, water resources reconstruction, and water security improvement. Eleven projects will be implemented to improve air quality. 

Six projects related to the comprehensive optimization of urban living environment will be implemented, focusing on urban quality improvement, and a green and low-carbon lifestyle. 

The city plans to carry out 15 projects to establish a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system.