The city of Beijing's Economic-Technological Development Area, or E-town, has spent 250 million yuan ($41 million) on changing all its coal-driven generators to gas-driven ones this year to reach its goal of cutting 38,000 tons of coal consumption and becoming a no-polluting-fuel area, Xinhua News Agency reported, on Nov 18.

This would make E-town the first coal–free zone in the entire city, with the funds used to replace all three power plants in the area and reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, by an estimated 300 tons and nitrous oxide emissions by 70 tons.

This establishing of coal-free zone is somewhat of a trend in China, but some provinces are keeping some coal-fired power plants and still allow coal for residential use, but E-town does not so it this is an unprecedented move -- running completely on natural gas and clean energy.

And this E-town move jibes with the city's ecological planning, which calls for six districts near the center to be coal-free, by 2020. In that sense, E-town is way ahead. Beijing's energy structure in 2012 was in great need of improvement, with coal accounting for 25.4 percent, petroleum, 31.1 percent, natural gas, 16.7 percent, and electric power 25.7 percent. City plans call for holding coal consumption below 10 million tons, by 2017, and clean energy, such as electricity and natural gas, for more than 90 percent of total usage.