China: Tangshan issues work plan for air quality improvement

The government of Tangshan City, China's largest steel production hub in North China's Hebei province, has unveiled a work plan aimed at enhancing air quality, as part of the city's efforts to promote 'green' development and low-carbon transformation, according to a recent release on its website.

The work plan, dated 31 May, outlines Tangshan's goal to reduce the concentration of PM 2.5-particulate matter that can damage human health when inhaled into the lungs-by 20% from the average in 2020 to reach 40 microgram per cubic metre by 2025.

Additionally, the plan aims to limit the proportion of days with heavy pollution levels to fewer than 1% on an annual basis and to lower the total emissions of nitrogen oxides and Volatile Organic Compound (VOCs) by more than 10% compared to 2020 levels, according to the release.

The plan emphasises optimising industrial, energy, and transportation structures, continuously controlling non-point source pollution, implementing multi-pollutant emission reductions, improving work mechanisms and strengthening support capacity among polluting industries. A total of 26 specific measures have been formulated to achieve these goals, the city's announcement said.

As for the steel industry, the plan focuses on sector upgrades, promoting the integrated layout of steelmaking, coking and sintering operations, while strictly prohibiting the addition of new steelmaking capacity. The plan also encourages technology transformation from the blast furnace-converter steelmaking route to electric-arc-furnace (EAF) steelmaking. The government also intends to accelerate the integration and upgrading of converters of less than 100 tonnes (t) capacity, the notice says.

By 2025, steel output via the EAF-route is targeted to account for over 4% of Tangshan's total steel production, according to the plan.

Tangshan will also advance the development of clean and new energy. By 2025, the city wants the total of installed capacity of renewable energy to reach over 6 million kilowatts and for consumption of non-fossil fuel energy to account for more than 4% of the city's total energy consumption. In tandem, by 2025 coal consumption is projected to drop by 10% from 2020, the release stated.

The plan also seeks to optimise cargo transport infrastructure. By 2025, the use of water transport for commodities will grow by 12% from 2020 levels, the report notes, adding that 80% of the iron ore and coke transported through the city's ports will use clean transport methods including new energy vehicles.

Tangshan does seem to have made some improvements to air quality over the past six years, Mysteel Global suggests. Every month, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) ranks the country's 168 most polluted cities in terms of air quality or PM 2.5 concentration, and back in June 2018, Tangshan had the ignominious honour of being ranked worst in the country according to the MEE's ranking but by September last year, the steel city had climbed to only the seventh worst.

Moreover, the MEE only publishes the rankings of the top 20 and bottom 20 for the 168 major cities nationwide and in its most recent posting-that for April-Tangshan's name does not appear at all, suggesting that the city has graduated out of the ranks of the Terrible Bottom Twenty, Mysteel Global noted.

Note: This article has been written in accordance with an article exchange agreement between MySteel Global and BigMint.