Ministry of Ecology and Environment: Actively promote steel, coal and other industries to resolve excess capacity

2021-02-27 17:00:21

Ministry of Ecology and Environment: Actively promote steel, coal and other industries to resolve excess capacity

Liu Bingjiang, director of the Department of Atmospheric Environment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said on the 25th that the proportion of coal in primary energy consumption continues to decrease. From 2017 to 2020, the proportion of national coal consumption will drop from 60.4% to about 57%.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a regular press conference on the 25th.

At the meeting, Liu Bingjiang introduced the relevant situation of air pollution prevention and control. In recent years, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, together with relevant departments in various places, has thoroughly implemented the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on winning the blue sky defense war, paid close attention to the implementation of responsibilities, and fully completed various tasks. Governance tasks, exceeding the overall goals and quantitative indicators proposed in the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", the "Three-Year Action Plan for Winning the Blue Sky War" came to a successful conclusion.

The first is to speed up the in-depth governance of key industries. Actively promote the elimination of excess capacity in the steel, coal, coal power, and cement industries. Continue to promote the ultra-low emission transformation of coal-fired power plants, with a cumulative total of 950 million kilowatts, and the ultra-low emission transformation of the iron and steel industry has a capacity of 620 million tons. The "scattered, messy, and dirty" key areas are dynamically cleared. Vigorously carry out investigation and treatment of industrial furnaces and kilns and comprehensive treatment of VOCs pollution.

The second is to steadily advance the adjustment and optimization of the energy structure. The proportion of coal in primary energy consumption continues to decline. From 2017 to 2020, the proportion of national coal consumption will drop from 60.4% to about 57%. About 100,000 small coal-fired boilers with no hope of treatment will be eliminated, and coal-fired boilers below 35 steam tons/hour in key areas will be basically cleared. The central government supported the pilot clean heating in the northern region to achieve full coverage of the "2+26" cities and the Fenwei Plain, and the cumulative replacement of scattered coal for about 25 million households has been completed.

The third is to further promote the adjustment and optimization of the transportation structure. Since the end of 2015, more than 14 million old motor vehicles have been eliminated across the country, and 4.92 million new energy vehicles have been retained. The proportion of new energy buses has increased from 20% to more than 60%. The national railway freight volume in 2020 will increase by more than 20% compared with 2017. National VI emission standards for light-duty vehicles shall be implemented nationwide, and gasoline and diesel for national VI standards shall be fully supplied.

The fourth is to continue to carry out comprehensive management actions in autumn and winter. Since 2017, we have carried out comprehensive control actions for air pollution in key areas in autumn and winter for 4 consecutive years. Organize and carry out the performance classification of emergency emission reduction measures for heavy pollution weather in key industries, covering 39 industries such as steel and coking, and encourage "advanced" with differentiated management and control, and promote industry transformation and upgrading. A total of 275,000 gas-related enterprises in key areas have been included in emergency emission reductions List. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the average PM2.5 concentration of 39 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas, and the Fenwei Plain was 62 micrograms/m3, a decrease of 39% compared with the same period in 2016; the number of days of heavy pollution decreased by 87% compared with the same period in 2016.

Fifth, the cause of the heavily polluted weather has been found out. The National Air Pollution Prevention and Control Center has been established. After three years of hard work, a number of key technological breakthroughs have been achieved in the cause mechanism, impact assessment, precise control, prediction and forecasting, etc., and the cause of heavy air pollution in the region in autumn and winter has been clarified. The expert team went deep into the "2+26" cities and the Fenwei Plain to carry out "One City, One Policy" technical assistance, and successfully completed the Prime Minister's Fund "Project on the Causes and Treatment of Heavy Air Pollution".

In addition, Liu Bingjiang introduced the national ambient air quality in 2020. He pointed out that in 2020, the overall improvement in national air quality will mainly show the following characteristics:

First, the "Thirteenth Five-Year" binding targets have been fully overfulfilled. In 2020, the ratio of good days in cities at prefecture-level and above will be 87%, an increase of 5.8 percentage points from 2015 (a target of 3.3 percentage points); the national average PM2.5 concentration will be 33 micrograms/m3, and the average PM2.5 in cities below the standard The concentration decreased by 28.8% compared with 2015 (target 18%), all of which exceeded the target requirements of the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan".

Second, the average concentration of the six major pollutants has dropped significantly year-on-year. In 2020, the national average concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, O3, SO2, NO2, and CO decreased by 8.3%, 11.1%, 6.8%, 9.1%, 11.1%, and 7.1% respectively. Among them, the concentration of O3 has decreased for the first time since 2015; the concentration of NO2 has decreased significantly while remaining basically unchanged for several consecutive years.

Third, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas and the Fenwei Plain are relatively heavily polluted. From the perspective of key areas, the air quality in the Yangtze River Delta is basically up to standard; the concentration of PM2.5 and O3 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas and the Fenwei Plain still exceeds the national secondary standards.

Fourth, severely polluted weather still occurs in individual areas and individual periods. The number of severely polluted days or more throughout the year mainly occurred during the alternate period of winter and spring, concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas, the Fenwei Plain, the Northeast and the Northwest. The "14th Five-Year Plan" has a long way to go to complete the goal of "basically eliminating heavy pollution."

Liu Bingjiang said that in the next step, we will work with relevant departments around the country to adhere to the general tone of the work of seeking progress while maintaining stability, adhere to the system concept, highlight precision pollution control, scientific pollution control, and pollution control in accordance with the law, so as to promote continuous improvement of national air quality.

Source: China News Network