Walking on the streets of Gujiao recently, my mind went back three years to my first visit to this industrial town, a satellite city northwest of Taiyuan.

The keyword then was "dusty". People kept their windows closed all day to prevent dust from covering the furniture; the external walls of the buildings were gray and dark because there was too much dust; and masks were the best-selling items in town because people were unable to walk in the open without one.

Everyone I met then spoke about the need for change nobody wanted to live in an environment where tables get dusty every day. The residents wanted clean air, clean water, blue skies and green meadows.

When people live in a poor environment, everybody knows change must come. The question is: how?

Persuasion doesn't help because there are too many vested interests. You cannot just believe that all entrepreneurs are saints and believe they will sacrifice their interests for the sake of the environment. Even if businesspeople are deeply moral individuals, they have investors to placate and workers to employ in their factories. Environmental protection is absolutely necessary, but workers need jobs and investors want to make money.

That's why the Gujiao power station model is important - it is economically sustainable. Protecting the environment does not harm economic interests; instead, protection brings greater benefits.

The power plant used to spend millions of yuan to buy water to cool the steam and employ laborers to dig 3-meter-holes in the nearby hills to dispose of the fly ash it generates. Now, both the steam and the fly ash have been transformed into products that create both revenue and jobs.

After years of recycling, Gujiao has changed.

The hills where the fly ash was once buried are green once again and water is no longer in short supply because thermal power plants do not consume large quantities.

What has happened in Gujiao is eventually going to happen across Shanxi, and even across the entire nation.

The State Council has started cutting overcapacity in the coal industry; that's a good move, but how do we persuade the workers and enterprises of the need for cuts?

Let's be a little more practical in protecting our environment. We can do it in an economical way and achieve a win-win result. Recycling coal-industry byproducts is a good way of realizing those goals because it creates social wealth while maintaining environmental safety. More important, it creates jobs and helps to distribute the wealth created among the workers.

This is real economics, not speculation.

China has pledged to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 50 percent in 2020.

That period "coincides" with the nation's economic slowdown and we want our country to become both green and prosperous. Finding an economical way to go "low-carbon" remains a challenge for the whole nation, but the Gujiao example provides many helpful hints.