China’s one of the biggest steel producing city, Tangshan in Hebei province has been making serious efforts, especially over last two years to curb the high pollution levels in the city emanated from steel mills and other industrial units.
In 2018 the city was able to reduce 5.02 MnT of crude steel capacity and about 2.98 MnT of pig iron capacity as a part of its pollution control campaign and the steel mills are ordered to partially enforce steel output and sintering restrictions until September.
Now as per the latest updates, apart from the output curbs, Tangshan has also started its campaign to relocate and upgrade its 13 steel and iron mills located near the main urban area to its coastal industrial parks in Laoting and Fengnan.
The steel and coking units based in and around main urban area contributed to 70% of the local air pollutants in the city last year thus compelling the government to relocate to coastal industrial parks.
The relocation and upgradation of steel mills in Tangshan will help cut coal consumption by 1 MnT and will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 MnT a year, according to the city’s ecology and environment department.
The city plans to reduce the number of local steel and iron companies to below 30 from the current 38 by 2020 and below 25 by 2025, with more moving up the value chain to produce high-end products.
The major steel base in Laoting is under construction and is scheduled to start operation in the second half of the ongoing year. It will use more energy-saving and environmentally-friendly techniques and churn out more high-end steel products. Between 2013 and 2018, Tangshan cut its steel and iron production capacity by more than 78 MnT in a bid to reduce excess capacity.
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