By Li Shouen, CCTV.com Reporter
China's booming development over the past decades, especially its large-scale investment in building and upgrading its infrastructure, has propelled it as a major steel-producing, consuming and trading country. But due to a lack of advanced technology and an insufficient environment protection consciousness, as well as a mindset to seek bigger profits at lower costs, the domestic steel sector has long been blamed for causing various pollution and affecting residents’ health in the surrounding areas of steel plants.
Top leaders of the Chinese government have realized it's high time to adjust to a greener development mode and protect the ecological system, by listing environment protection and pollution control as one of its three tough battles, which also include preventing and defusing financial risks and targeted poverty alleviation.
The 2018 (ninth) China Steel Industry Energy-saving and Emission-reduction Forum, co-hosted by the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute and Shandong Guoshun Construction Group Co., Ltd. was held on July 21 in Beijing. Over 300 government officials, academicians, experts and representatives had participated in the forum themed, "Minimum Emission & Green Development for an Ecological Civilization in Steel Industry" and shared their views on how to build a greener China.
(The 2018 /Ninth China Steel Industry Energy-saving and Emission-reduction Forum was held on July 21 in Beijing Photo/Li Shouen)
Li Xinchuang, President of China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, said Beijing has made significant progress by cutting about 60% emissions of pollutants including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, etc. per ton steel in the past ten years. But he added due to the scale of overall steel output, the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter from the steel industry are still ranking No. 3, No. 2 and No. 1 respectively among all industries, which indicates it remains a tough task to protect blue skies for the Chinese.
He also pointed out the Chinese government has stepped up efforts and will soon put in use its "most strict standards on minimum emission in its history," which requires steel plants in Jing-Jin-Ji area, the Yangtze River Delta area, as well as Fengwei Plain area, to complete their minimum emissions renovations by the end of October 2020, and all those in other regions by 2025.
He called on steel plants to upgrade their environmental protection consciousness, shifting from previous “environment protection is merely a cost” into “environment protection can be an investment.” By upgrading its environment protection capability, the plant can enhance its overall competitiveness and enjoy preferential policy of lower environmental taxes; on the other hand, it might face heavy penalties including fines, or limited production, or even temporary shut-downs due to violations of environment regulations and laws, which would in turn bring them huge losses.
Matthias Dahlem, Senior Manager Technical Support of the Joint Ventures ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG, also shared their experiences on environment improvements. He noted that although most of thyssenkrupp Steel’s plants, which are in operation today were built between 1965 and 1975, they are still among the best ones due to their frequent modernization and installations in accordance with stringent environmental demands.
Other participants also discussed the contents and technical routes for steel industry and steel plants to meet the minimum emission requirements. They shared their successful experiences in energy-savings and emission-reductions.
(The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com. )
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