Beijing's central Xicheng District and Dongcheng District will bid farewell to smokey coal-fueled stoves by the end of the year, Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said Tuesday.

A total of 23,800 households from the two downtown districts will not use coal as their primary source of heat this winter. The last nine coal sales spots in the two districts will be closed.

The local residents are encouraged to use clean energy, such as electricity, as a substitute for coal to help improve air quality.

A project was launched in 2000 to replace household stoves in bungalows with electric radiators in the core areas of the capital, helping the city to reduce its major pollutants over the past 16 years, the bureau said

So far, a total of 308,000 households from the Dongcheng District and Xicheng District have changed their heating system to cleaner sources because of the project.

Environmental monitoring results show that Beijing's annual average density of sulfur dioxide, a major air pollutant, has been reduced from 120 micrograms per cubic meter in 1998 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter in 2015.

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