As Beijing prepares itself for the Olympics in 2008, the city is doing numerous things to clean up the city. If you think the air quality in Los Angeles is bad, Beijing is another level.  The smog pollution is one of the big concerns, and the plan is to cut down the amount of cars on the road. When officials in Beijing kept 800,000 cars off the road for three days last year, it reduced air pollution by 40%. The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars reducing public transportation fares, developing the transit system, and improving bus routes and services. Driving personal cars to attend the Olympic events in 2008 will be prohibited. The Olympic Forest Park being built for the Olympics is using state of the art technology and sustainable materials as it will be a model for the sustainable city and water management. Pictured above is an environmentally sustainable alternative paving system that is a mix between grass and concrete. Here is a gallery of other green technologies in Beijing:

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This is a list of clean and renewable energy projects taken from Shield Innovations for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

New energy and new technology for energy-use
* Space heating with geothermal energy and water source heat pumps There will be 160 geothermal wells completed in the city by 2008. The construction of geothermal heating project in Olympic Garden will be completed to serve 0.40 million square meters in the stadiums and gymnasiums for space heating.
* Solar energy To devote major efforts to promote energy solar utilization, 3MW solar cells will be constructed in Olympic Park as a demonstrating project, where 90% hot water produced by solar energy. Solar photo electricity application project and solar thermal utilization project in Olympic Park are constructed.
* Wind power The existing and planned wind power capacity is 50MW in the outer suburb areas of Beijing, which can supply mainly 20% of the electricity demand of Olympic Park as committed in the bidding report to the IOC. Efforts will be made to purchase wind power from the neighboring provinces during the Olympic Games. The feasibility of wind power development in Yanqing, north west of Beijing, is also under investigation.
* Biomass energy Quality of rural energy will improve, leading to improvement in rural energy use, air and water environment and comprehensive utilization of agricultural wastes. Main measures include biomass gasification projects for centralized biogas supply and large-scale biogas energy-environment projects
* Fuel cells and electric vehicles efforts will be made in research and development of fuel-cell-driven and power-driven vehicles aiming to mitigate the pollution induced by transportation.