5. Great efforts were made to conserve energy, reduce emissions, and protect the environment.

Energy consumption per unit of GDP met the planned target by dropping 3.6%, 1.59 percentage points more than the previous year. We continued with the project to promote energy-efficient products for the benefit of the people, and comprehensively stepped up efforts to conserve energy and reduce emissions in key areas such as manufacturing, construction, transportation, and public institutions. We further improved policies for encouraging development of a circular economy. We intensified efforts to carry out pilot projects for demonstration of recovering mineral resources from city waste, upgrading industrial parks to make their operations more circular, promoting remanufacturing, and facilitating comprehensive use of resources. We supported 489 major demonstration projects to develop a circular economy and conserve resources, capable of saving 260 million tons of water and recycling over 69 million tons of waste annually. We continued to carry out key ecological projects to protect virgin forests, return farmland to forests and grazing land to grasslands, build forest shelterbelts, control the sources of dust storms affecting Beijing and Tianjin, and comprehensively deal with stony deserts. During the year, 6.01 million hectares of land were afforested and 5.827 million hectares of degraded grasslands were improved. We modified ambient air quality standards by including the monitoring of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and published relevant data in some areas and cities. We moved faster to construct urban sewage and garbage treatment facilities and sewer lines, increasing daily capacity of wastewater treatment by 11.06 million tons, recycled water production by 2.21 million tons, and garbage treatment by 93,000 tons. Sulfur dioxide emissions, chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, and emissions of nitrogen oxide dropped 4.52%, 3.05%, 2.62%, and 2.77%, respectively, water consumption per 10,000 yuan of value-added of industry decreased 8%, and the percentages of urban sewage treated and urban household waste safely handled reached 84.9% and 81%, respectively, all meeting their planned targets. We made steady progress in responding to climate change. Carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP decreased 5.02%, 1.52 percentage points higher than the planned target. We energetically promoted South-South cooperation in responding to climate change, played a constructive role in international talks, and made important contributions to the positive outcomes achieved at the Doha United Nations Climate Change Conference.