Residents in Harbin, China’s northern most capital city, started to enjoy central heating on Oct 20.

Harbin has made significant progress in improving heating services this year.

Three central heating projects have been constructed in 2018 to provide extra heating services for building areas covering 12.5 million square meters.

Harbin also modified or renovated 79 coal-fired boilers in old residential communities in line with local environmental protection policies.

So far, central heating penetration rate in the city reaches 95 percent.

In addition, some central heating systems in Harbin adopted electricity, fuel gas and sewage heat pumps to replace coal as heating fuel for the first time, in a bid to improve Harbin’s air quality during the six-month long heating season.

To guarantee the safety and reliability of the central heating system, trial operations for the system were conducted 10 days in advance in some areas.