The 13th five-year plan will be a special and crucial period for both environmental management and macroeconomic development.
In terms of environment, the next few years will probably be the most important period for environmental improvement in China.People are still complaining about environmental pollution such as smog.However, in fact, in the middle and later period of the 12th five-year plan, the emission of some pollutants in industrial wastewater, municipal sewage and most of the pollutants in industrial waste gas has already passed the peak, showing a trend of decreasing year by year (see figure 1).In other words, the emission curve of quite a few pollutants in China has approached or even passed the peak.However, this result does not directly lead to the improvement of environmental quality, especially the overall improvement of environmental quality that can be observed.In addition to the objective reasons such as the time needed for environmental self-recovery, the scientific nature of environmental protection policies and the non-standard, illegal and even some black-box operations in the implementation of policies make the effect of environmental governance to be weakened.Fortunately, willingly or reluctantly, actively or passively, these irregularities and illegality are gradually corrected under questioning, and these black boxes start to be opened.Is, therefore, in the next few years will be reflected is the effect of pollution control, environmental degradation trends are a key period, number of emission reduction on paper or will be implemented to the ordinary people and the quality improvement of ecological environment key period – if the target is not achieved, pollutant control work in recent years, it will have very big question, and if successful, is over the “environmental kuznets curve” vertices will smooth realization, ecological environment in our country will be fully into the virtuous cycle track.
In terms of economy, the early period of the 13th five-year plan will be the key node for China’s economic growth rate to shift gears.This stage will be the best opportunity for China to adjust its industrial structure, eliminate backward production capacity, transform extensive development mode into refined development mode in many industries, and realize supply-side reform.”Green development”, “ecological civilization construction” and many other official proposals also illustrate that improving the utilization efficiency of environmental resources and reducing the environmental cost of development is one of the themes of economic development in the 13th five-year plan period.
All in all, the five years of the 13th five-year plan will be a period of qualitative changes in China’s environmental management and economic development, which is also a rare opportunity for the development of environmental protection industry.
Ideal and reality of environmental governance improvement goal
“The idea of environmental protection will be changed from a single core for pollutant control to a dual core for environmental quality improvement and total pollutant control.”This expression in the recent official release of all kinds of planning and programmatic documents have been reflected.
Relevant documents, such as the “water ten-point plan”, also outline the goals for the goal of environmental quality improvement: to achieve phased improvement of water environment quality, overall improvement and overall improvement of ecological environment quality by 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively.It is a three-step road map: comprehensively reverse the emission curve;Enter the scope of environmental self-purification ability, the environment into a benign orbit;The pollution problem has been solved and the green and sustainable development has been realized.Officials have also outlined a basic path to achieve this goal: reducing the total amount of pollutants discharged by controlling emissions from various sources, transforming the economy and other measures;At the same time, through the sponge city construction, constructed wetland construction and other measures, cultivate and transform the water ecological space, to achieve the increase of environmental capacity.The numerator decreases and the denominator increases, and water environmental management is improved.
However, the implementation of the seemingly rosy roadmap and methodology is very realistic.In November, the ministry of environmental protection (mep) issued a draft on pollutant discharge standards for urban sewage treatment plants to revise the current municipal sewage discharge standards, and the water treatment industry is likely to receive its fourth bid.The points of concern in the draft include: increasing the pollutant control project, increasing the total nickel and benzo (a) pyrene in the basic control project, and increasing 39 kinds of metals and organic pollutants in the selected control project;
In addition, the new standards will impose special emission limits in environmentally sensitive areas. Most of the major projects with special emission limits are about half of the strictest grade A standard, and are equivalent to the surface water grade IV standard.If approved, the revised standards will come into effect on July 1, according to the timetable.The almost harsh standard revision caused the industry inside and outside the extensive discussion and questions, the focus of the debate mainly lies in the fact that our current emission standards have same level with the developed countries, and even a bit strict international average level, “greed” yan again to improve standards will be inconsistent with the vast majority of the sewage factory actual operating in severe cases, a large number of sewage plant small profit space will be compressed further, so much of the cost, can obtain the result is difficult to forecast and evaluate ̷ again
In any case, stricter standards are good news for some environmental companies, especially small and medium-sized technology companies.For example, membrane technology is almost the only process option in areas with special emission limits.Enterprises with high-tech products and services will get a substantial share of the market share from upgrading projects and new projects with high standards.At the same time, high-tech value-added enterprises will also be more favored by investment institutions and large environmental protection enterprises.Cooperation between “big and small” industries, “capital” and “technology” will be more frequent and closer.
It is implemented at the enterprise and project level.One of the most prominent trends in the last year or two is that individual environmental protection projects, which used to be scattered, are being replaced by large-scale and integrated environmental services.In the field of water treatment, for example, in the past, most environmental protection enterprises received single project contracts for sewage treatment and water supply. Since 2015, regional environmental strategic cooperation agreements covering water restoration, construction and operation of large sewage plants, sponge city construction, industrial park water treatment, reclaimed water and many other contents have become popular.The former typically invest tens to hundreds of millions of yuan, while the latter can reach billions of yuan.Although there are analysts pointed out that paper for investment is difficult to the actual full specified amount, but what is undeniable is that regional environmental management (government) to the environmental protection company specialized market more in-depth introduction to the environmental management work, purchasing equipment and engineering into purchasing services from the past in order to obtain higher environmental performance has become the trend of The Times.
