China Energy Outlook 2020 - Flipbook - Page 78
Green Manufacturing, promoted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT),
covers the life cycle of industry activities – from green design, to green procurement of raw
materials, clean production, green transport, and circular economy. In 2016, MIIT released the
Industry Green Development Plan (2016-2020), which set voluntary guiding targets for
improving the specific energy consumption of key industrial products (steel, cement, aluminum,
ethylene, ammonia, and paper), improving industrial solid waste utilization rates, increasing
recycling rates of non-ferrous metals, steel scrap, plastics, and tires, and increasing the share of
green and low carbon energy sources in industrial energy use (MIIT, 2016). The purpose of the
plan is to support State Council’s Made in China 2025 and the 13th Five-Year Plan.
Most recently, MIIT and the China Development Bank jointly released a notice to accelerate
industrial energy conservation and green manufacturing by leveraging green lending, i.e.,
expanding the use of pledged supplementary lending (PSL) to ecological and environmental
protection areas (MIIT, 2019a). Eligible projects in the areas of environmental protection
technical retrofits and upgrades, industrial waste gas, waste water and solid waste treatment,
resource utilization and recycling, and industrial company relocation can receive low-cost
capital support from the China Development Bank and its local branches.
Circular Economy
The concepts of clean production and green manufacturing have been further extended to
efforts to develop a circular economy that includes all economic sectors and extends to
resource extraction and mining, resource consumption, materials recycling and re-utilization,
and behavior changes to reduce waste from by-products and reduce demand for new/virgin
materials.
Circular Economy, which became a key policy area during the 11th and 12th FYP periods, goes
beyond clean production and green manufacturing to include all economic sectors and extends
to resource extraction and mining, resource consumption, resource recycling and utilization,
and behavior changes. In 2008, China formulated the Circular Economy Promotion Law; and in
2013, the State Council published the Development Strategies and Near-Term Action Plan of
Circular Economy. Currently, the Circular Economy work in China primarily targets: (1) recycling
of industrial waste (the so-called urban mine), (2) re-manufacturing: retooling or upgrading old
machinery to reclaim their value, (3) clean production retrofits of coking, building materials,
non-ferrous metals, chemicals, and textiles industry and implementing ultra-low emissions
retrofits in iron and steel industry, (4) energy conservation, water conservation, and emissions
reduction, (5) green manufacturing systems to develop green factories, green parks, green
products, and green supply-chains.
Mandatory Reduction of Production Overcapacity
The Chinese government’s efforts to reduce industrial overcapacity have made successful
strides in the steel, coal, and coal-fired power sectors, with less success in the cement sector
and now faces a renewed risk of overcapacity.
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