As per the latest updates, China will continue its production restriction in heavy industry including steel as well as tighten its emissions on steel mills in case of granting exemptions from curbs already in place.
As a part of anti-pollution campaign, in its first year of production cut during winters in 2017, China adopted blanket production for all the steel mills, in the second year the country ditched blanket production cuts on heavy industry allowing local authorities to adopt measures based on regional emission levels. However, there has been increased discontent in China over large scale industrial shutdown and thus the Chinese government has vowed to adopt more effective and targeted measures for its war against air pollution by imposing different levels of output cuts on companies based on their emission situation.
“The steel industry remains a major contributor of pollutants despite improvement in emission levels and production restrictions. This year, there will not be many first-class firms that will be exempt from curbs,” Liu Bingjiang, the head of the atmospheric environment department at Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), told an industrial conference. MEE will bring in industrial associations to carry out emission assessments on mills to avoid fraud in the emission upgrading process.
China, the world’s biggest steel producer, has ordered mills in key regions, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Fenwei Plain and the Yangtze River Delta, which includes more than 60% of country’s steel capacity to meet ultra-low emission standards by 2020. Companies that attain “ultra-low” emission standards are entitled to be exempt from or are allowed to implement a minimum level of production cuts during smog days.
China is continuing to churn out steel in large quantity as it produced 87.53 MnT of crude steel in June as per the NBS data and a total of 491 MnT in first six months of 2019. Of the incremental output, about 50% comes from small steel firms whose emission level is typically lower compared with their mid- and big-sized rivals. Steel mills in China are investing huge amounts of money to improve their emission levels.
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