China's MEE sending inspection teams to five provinces

China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has sent its seven inspection teams to five provinces and two state-owned enterprises in the country, to investigate and uncover any illegitimate high energy-consuming and high-waste emitting projects, reincarnation of dismantled obsolete iron and steel capacities and any violations of environmental protection rules and regulations, according to a MEE notice on August 25.

The seven inspection teams led by central government officials with five to visit Northeast China's Jilin, East China's Shandong, Central China's Hubei, South China's Guangdong, and Southwest China's Sichuan provinces, and the other two are to review the operations of China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group and China National Gold Group Co - two state-owned mining companies, according to the notice.

The inspections, running across China from North to South, will be conducted on site and for one month, according to the ministry, and Shandong among the provinces, for example, is a leading production base for gold, aluminum, and steel in China, Mysteel Global noted.

Other than the inspection on related projects, the seven teams are also assigned to thoroughly understand the carbon emission status quo for the related provinces and companies so as to provide related information for Beijing's drafting carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality execution plans, the notice shared.

To facilitate the inspection, the working teams, once arriving at the site, will publicize their hot-lines and mail addresses to collect complaints or tip-offs from the public during their stay.

"I can feel that Shandong province is no longer favouring aluminum smelters like this under the pressure of carbon emission peak and carbon neutral, and to survive, we are optimizing our power consumption, diversifying into secondary aluminum and aluminum products utilized in lighter-weighted auto manufacturing," an official from a local aluminum smelter shared.

China National Gold Group is the country's largest gold miner and producer and the five provinces produced 123.8 million tonnes of steel over January-July, or accounting for 19.1% of the country's total with Shandong the third largest steel producing province by July.

The seven teams has been the part of the fourth-batch spot checks by the central government, and in the third batch, eight other provinces in China had been visited over April 6-May 9 with the inspectors having collected 29,133 tip-offs from the public, penalized 2,575 companies with 95 personnel jailed and 844 held accountable and fined with Yuan 191 million ($29.5 million), according to a MEE sharing on May 15.

In a joint notice with four ministries including MEE on August 16, Shandong and Sichuan have been identified among nine provinces and autonomous regions in China that no high-polluting, high water-consuming and high energy-consuming projects will be approved in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) and those that have been approved need to be reviewed by the end of 2021.

Written by Olivia Zhang, zhangwd@mysteel.com

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.