About an hour's flight from Beijing, Baotou is located in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and is known as a "rare earth capital". [Photo/VCG]

The Baotou government of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region will leverage more help from Fortune 500 companies in the city's modern energy development.

At a recently concluded investment fair, China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) and several Fortune 500 companies signed agreements with Baotou on new energy, power, and ecological protection projects.

According to the agreements, the Sinopec Group and Baotou will co-build energy service stations that simultaneously provide gasoline, gas, hydrogen and electricity.

The China Energy Engineering Group Co. (Energy China Group) and Baotou will explore the fields of energy and power, new urbanization, integrated transportation, ecological protection and environmental governance.

In recent years, Baotou has been promoting further development of the energy production and consumption of transformation-related service industries, in a bid to advance towards green, low-carbon, and even zero-carbon development.

An investment promotion event is held in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, on Aug 25. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On Wednesday, Baotou held an investment promotion event, and 22 of the 45 signed projects were energy-related, including photovoltaics, hydrogen power, wind power, and carbon neutrality, totaling an investment worth 89.3 billion yuan ($13.78 billion).

Baotou's Vice Mayor Wang Xiulian said at the event that Baotou is stepping up in its efforts to encourage investment, and will provide a full range of services to ensure the smooth implementation of projects.

She noted that the city is striving to provide a better business environment, working and living conditions, and a good ecological environment for entrepreneurs to innovate and set up businesses.

As the largest industrial city in Inner Mongolia, Baotou has formed many industrial clusters, including rare earth, iron and steel, aluminum, the coal and chemical industry, equipment manufacturing, and new energy.

It has one national rare earth high-tech industrial development zone and eight autonomous region-level industrial parks, and is the largest rare earth R&D production base in China.