China’s Hebei province, the steelmaking hub located in the northern part of the country, has announced it is aiming for a reduction in its production of crude steel by 21.71 million tonnes (mn t) in CY’21, SteelMint learned from latest reports. Among them, Tangshan, the top steelmaking city in Hebei, plans to cut 12.37 mn t of crude steel output this year, accounting for about 57% of the latter’s set target.
To achieve this target, crude steel output from Hebei in CY’21 should be less than 8.8% compared to that in 2020. Likewise, production in the second half of the year (H2CY’21) needs to be reduced by 16% y-o-y.
Crude steel output to be reduced to 106.51 mn t in H2
In CY’20, the annual crude steel production from Hebei was at 249.77 mn t. After implementation of this output reduction plan, the total crude steel output from this region would be around 222.06 mn t in CY’21.
Cumulative crude steel production from Hebei in H1CY’21 (Jan-Jun’21) amounted to 121.55 mn t. This way, to meet the CY’21 target, production from this region in H2CY’21 (Jul-Dec’21) should not exceed more than 106.51 mn t. The average monthly production limit will be 17.75 mn t and average daily limit will be 578,900 t, as per the set guidelines.
Crude steel output from Tangshan totalled 64.4 mn t in Jan-Jun’21. So, the upper limit of Tangshan’s crude steel production in Jul-Dec’21 is 67.3 mn t, with an average of 11.21 mn t/month and 365,800 t/day.
Plans for emission cuts in CY’21
Since the beginning of CY’21, Hebei province has strictly implemented 10 measures to control deteriorated air condition in the region which also includes coal reduction, vehicle control and dust suppression to reduce the total amount of pollutant emissions. In addition, it had reduced inefficiency and excess capacity of some key industries, shut down 19 blast furnaces, 15 convertors, seven coke ovens, four coal-fired plants, and 19 independent lime kilns in total. Further, the local government had strictly ordered the key coal-consuming sectors such as iron and steel, electric power and building materials to control coal consumption.
In Jul’21, the average concentration of PM2.5 (used to measure air pollutant particles that have diametre less than 2.5 micrometres) in Hebei province was recorded at 21 micrograms/cubic metre, a y-o-y decrease of 40% which was the lowest since data maintained from 2013. During Jan-Jul’21, the average PM2.5 concentration was at 41 micrograms/cubicmetre, down 14.6% y-o-y.
Following these measures, China’s steelmaking hub is expecting to see a significant difference in air pollution levels this year along with a reduction in carbon emissions.
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