May saw a flurry of hot topics surrounding energy conservation and emission reduction nationwide. Policies to advance ecological progress and the Made in China 2025 initiative were successively rolled out. A review of local practices reveals that a refined campaign for energy conservation and emission reduction has been launched across the whole country.

Early in the month, the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Accelerating Ecological Civilization Construction was released to the public, listing energy conservation and emission reduction as one of its 35 key provisions. On May 19, the Made in China 2025 blueprint was unveiled, explicitly setting a target that within a decade, China’s key industries will reach world advanced levels in energy consumption, material consumption and pollutant emissions per unit of industrial added value.

On the 21st, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission disclosed that China planned to phase out an additional 15 million tons of backward steel production capacity within the year. From May 19 to 22, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held symposiums on the 13th Five-Year Plan’s energy conservation, emission reduction and green development roadmaps for sectors including building materials, equipment manufacturing, non-ferrous metals, light industry, papermaking, petrochemicals and chemical engineering.

Energy conservation and emission reduction refers to two core undertakings: cutting energy consumption and curbing harmful environmental pollutant discharges. In recent years, smog and other polluted weather have pushed emission reduction high on the public agenda.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, a smog-prone heavy pollution zone, serves as a typical example. Tianjin has mapped out information distribution charts of gas-related pollution sources. Starting May 1, 2015, the city raised the pollutant discharge fee standard for soot by ten times and introduced a new levy on construction fugitive dust. Beijing and Tianjin have both rolled out a full set of supporting regulatory measures.

“To combat air pollution, we must pinpoint pollution sources and bring them under control percentage by percentage,” said Bao Jingling, counselor of the Tianjin Municipal People’s Government and former chief engineer of the Tianjin Ecology and Environment Bureau.

Emission reduction work across Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei has evolved from early-stage control of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into a comprehensive six-pronged governance system targeting coal use, vehicle exhaust, fugitive dust, industrial pollution, new construction projects and agricultural pollution, while also tackling volatile organic compounds and straw burning.

Nevertheless, increasingly refined emission reduction regulation has created new challenges. Wang Shiwei, production director of a Tianjin iron and steel enterprise, explained that desulfurization and denitrification add an extra cost of 20 yuan per ton of product, with annual electricity expenses for the related equipment surging by 13 million yuan. Reporters learned that besides rising operating costs, higher power consumption by pollution abatement facilities has created a dilemma for energy conservation targets.

“Emission reduction does not equate to energy saving. We can only offset the extra power load of environmental equipment as much as possible by adopting low-temperature economizers and other technologies,” a technician at a power plant in Sanhe, Hebei Province, noted. Faced with dual mandates of energy conservation and emission reduction, enterprises are driven by environmental regulation to pursue technological transformation. They focus on fine-tuning processes to integrate energy efficiency and pollution abatement step by step.

A gas-fired distributed energy station in Wuqing District, Tianjin, has adopted cascade energy utilization technology in recent years. The facility delivers four types of output — electricity, heating, industrial steam, central cooling and domestic hot water — while slashing pollutant emissions without increasing overall energy consumption.

“Cascade utilization lets us fully extract value from energy while cutting emissions,” said Chen Yunshan, General Manager of Tianjin Huadian Fuyuan Thermal Power Co., Ltd., which operates the station. Compared with conventional combustion units of equivalent scale, the station cuts annual carbon dioxide emissions by 900,000 tons, nitrogen oxide emissions by 1,000 tons, sulfur dioxide emissions by 1,000 tons and dust emissions by 240 tons.

A similar case can be found at Delong Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. in Xingtai, Hebei Province. Amid a prolonged downturn in the steel industry, the firm channels cost savings generated by its internal recycling systems into environmental upgrades. According to General Manager Kan Yonghai, the plant now treats all its wastewater to drinking water standards for full recycling.

Furthermore, market-based mechanisms including carbon emissions trading and compensated use and trading of pollutant discharge permits have been steadily promoted nationwide. Under such frameworks, enterprises with low marginal abatement costs cut emissions and sell surplus allowances, while heavy polluters purchase quotas to cap total carbon and key pollutant output. This model achieves overall energy conservation and emission reduction at the lowest aggregate social cost.

“As a major energy consumer and emitter, China still faces a long, arduous journey in energy conservation and emission reduction, requiring steady, patient progress step by step,” commented Sun Zhenqing, Director of the Research Center for Energy, Environment and Green Development at Tianjin University of Science and Technology.

Source: Informatization and Software Service Network