Beijing’s shift of its focus onto detailed air pollution
control guidelines for the “2+26” cities over October 1-March 31 2019, which
differs from the specific and detailed blanket control over polluting
industries including steel on their capacities, will by no means suggest “the loosening in control or lower severity
in essence from the 2017 winter”, according to Chinese market sources on Friday.
An official notice
released by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on September 27
set the general target for these cities around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area
to decrease the concentration of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) by 3% on
average and the number of heavy-polluted days by 3% on average too year on
year.
Related city
governments, on the other hand, will be the decision makers in formulating
detailed and specific restriction measures according to their individual
conditions among key industries including steel, coking and nonferrous smelting
and refining to fulfill the air pollution control targets. All the
measures are to be submitted to the central government no later than the end of
October.
The final version of
the notice, just as reported earlier on, has abandoned last year’s practice by
listing out details such as capacity cut ratios of each industry in each city,
highlighting, though, that the industrial enterprises already completing the
upgrading of eco-friendly facilities and meeting emission reduction
requirements can be exempted from the curbs.
A Beijing-based market
watcher, acknowledged that Beijing’s change of strategy just to illustrate that
it has delivered its promise of not to impose “one-for-all” capacity
curtailments measures upon all the enterprises in each related industry.
“In principle, Beijing
has set an ultimate goal for local governments but has given them the
flexibility to choose how to achieve it, which shows that the central
government is more experienced and has a better system for supervising
production curbs, enabling it to be less rigid and ruthless in imposing detailed
measures,” he said.
However, “the new MEE
approach does not mean that there will be no curtailments or less severe
restriction,” he argued.
An official from a
steel mill in North China’s Hebei province shared the view, pointing out that
MEE’s new means of control “has left the room for cities to take their own
initiatives and will be fairer to those steelmakers that have made greater
efforts and heavier investments in environmental protection facilities”.
Tangshan city in Hebei
province, for example, is the first among the “2+26” cities to have released
the detailed curbing measures on its local steel mills’ ironmaking, steelmaking
and coking capacities by categorizing its steel mills into four groups
according to their pollution control efforts and varying the degrees of cuts
from 70% to zero, as well as imposing the restriction on October 1, way in
advance than last year’s November 15, as reported.
“By doing so, Tangshan
will be sending a clear message, encouraging local mills to upgrade their eco-friendly
facilities and intensify their efforts in controlling their waste
emissions,” a Tangshan-based steelmaker said.
Last winter, the
prevalent cut was 30-50% on steel mills’ blast furnace capacities, so this
year’s 70% cut on those mills that are stubborn and unwilling to make extra
efforts in reducing emissions further will much severer than last year, he
pointed out.
The “2+26” cities
include those located in Hebei, Henan, Shanxi and Shandong together with
Tianjin and Beijing, and combined steel output of these six provinces and
regions for 2017 accounted for 42.6% of the country’s total.
Some other steel market
sources, however, expressed their fear that the capacity restrictions in the
2018 winter, not as detailed and explicit as in 2017, may lead to higher
supplies and price falls.
Written by Venus Wang, wangyi@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com