WB Loan Helps Shanxi Environmental Protection

Wireless environmental protection for China's major coal producer, Shanxi Province, will be partly funded through a loan from the World Bank, the province has announced on Monday.

The loan of US$150 million will pay 36 percent of the cost of the wireless network, slated for completion by 2015, said Du Bin, of the monitoring department at the provincial environmental bureau on Monday.

The wireless system will have many electronic devices connected to the Internet for monitoring environment quality, tracing polluting sources and evaluating environmental risk, he said.

As the second largest coal production base in China, coal output of Shanxi came to 913 million tonnes in 2012, accounting for a quarter of national output.

Decades of coal production, however, have left a heavy environmental debt for the dry province.