Formulate and implement environmental protection standards, prevent and control pollution, inhibit excess capacity in the industry
Affected by financial crisis, overcapacity and other factors, in the first half of this year, China's coal-made methanol and methanol derivatives, coke, and calcium carbide process polyvinyl chloride continued its low operating rate and low profit margin levels in the fourth quarter of 2008. A situation. The operating rate of related projects continued to decline. In the first half of the year, the operating rate of methanol plants was less than 30%, and the operating rate of dimethyl ether industry was less than 20%.
However, from the situation of more than a dozen provinces and cities that have officially announced the revitalization plan for the petrochemical industry in the region, the investment growth in industries with relatively overcapacity is still rapid, and the investment impulse is still high. In the local revitalization plan, there was only one methanol, and some provinces planned 6 million tons, and some provinces even planned 12 million tons; two provinces of PVC had planned 3 million tons each. According to this plan, the problem of overcapacity of some products will further intensify.
In July this year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission, the General Administration of Customs, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine jointly issued the "Announcement on Adjusting the Catalogue of Imported Waste Management." Among them, polysilicon wastes with silicon content of not less than 99.99% are listed as restricted imports. In view of the fact that at present, silicon waste and scrap materials replace about half of the polysilicon raw materials in production, implementation of this announcement can actually play a positive role in curbing the excess capacity of the domestic polysilicon industry.
In addition, we should also increase the efforts to formulate and revise the industry's pollutant discharge standards, especially for industries such as heavy pollution, overcapacity, and high energy consumption, and accelerate the formulation and revision of industrial pollutant discharge standards and improve the environmental protection access standards for these industries. Raising the environmental protection threshold will help to fundamentally curb the problem of excess capacity.
In August this year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection also issued the "Sulfuric Acid Industrial Pollutants Emission Standard" (draft for soliciting opinions), and the new standards are in line with international standards. Once implemented, the new standard will promote the survival of the fittest, upgrade and upgrade the rare earth and sulfuric acid industries, and increase the overall environmental protection level. The new standard will also play a role in increasing industrial concentration, promoting industry optimization and eliminating backward production capacity, and ultimately have a positive impact on the suppression of excess capacity in the industry.
In summary, the adoption of environmental protection standards will help curb excess capacity in some industries. Because environmental protection standards are a hard target, such as projects that fail to pass the environmental assessment and approval, all construction projects that are not approved for start-up shall be prohibited; enterprises that fail to meet pollutant emission standards or exceed the total emission standards must be treated within a certain period of time. Discontinued processing. For projects that do not meet environmental standards, companies can only choose not to start or stop production. From this perspective, the use of environmental protection standards can effectively suppress excess production capacity and duplicate construction.