Earlier this year, the people in Shaanxi Province rejoiced at two pieces of news about water. The first is that water pollution is now under effective control at Weihe River, the largest tributary of the Yellow River that flows through the Central Shaanxi plain. Water quality of the mainstream has improved from inferior to Grade V to Grade V for over 75 percent of the time, ranking second in the national water quality assessment of the Yellow River.
The second is that the scale of sewage treatment plants along the Weihe River has expanded over the past four years to 4.8 times as much as the total in the past 30 years. From this year, cities along the Weihe River will have to pay a hefty fine of RMB 100,000 for every 1 milligram of pollutants exceeding national standard.
Shaanxi Province has stepped up efforts to accelerate the transformation of its economic development pattern and demonstrated its commitment to optimized economic structure through environmental protection strategies.
Last year, Shaanxi Province responded to the global financial crisis in a proactive manner and achieved new heights in its economic development. Economic aggregate of the Province increased 13.6 percent year-over-year to RMB 818.665 billion. In the first two months of this year, all of the eight pillar industries of Shaanxi recorded growth, with the accumulative added value of industry exceeding RMB 55.
1 billion, up 31.1 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, the Province s environmental quality has been significantly improved. In 2009, ten cities across the Province enjoyed fine weather for 327 days. Water and soil erosion on 6,644 square kilometers of lands were brought under control. Plant cover reached nearly 69 percent.
Energy consumption per RMB 10,000 GDP was reduced by over 4.5 percent. Sulfur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand were reduced by 7 percent and 3.5 percent year-over-year, respectively. A total of 200 big energy consumers fulfilled their energy conservation and emission reduction goals for the Eleventh Five Year Plan ahead of schedule.
To curb major environmental concerns, the Province has formed programs that integrate environmental protection and economic development and improved its environmental protection mechanism these efforts constitute an important part in the transformation of economic development pattern and the optimization of economic structure through environmental protection strategies.
The Qinling Mountain which ranges across Shaanxi Province is not only a treasury of natural mineral products, but also an important national geographical coordinate and ecological screen. To reduce the damage to the environment on the northern slope of the Qinling Mountain, Shaanxi Province introduced the Outline on the Protection of Ecological System on Qinling Mountain and the Program for Ecological Protection and Comprehensive Utilization on the Northern Slope of the Qinling Mountain.
In 2009, the Provincial People s Congress approved the Regulations on Environmental Protection on the Qinling Mountain, making environmental protection on the Qinling Mountain a legal requirement and law enforcement inspections a regular procedure. Nearly 400 illegal mineral and real estate programs in the north of Qinling Mountains have been regulated, the discharge of wastewater reducing by 2000 tons per year, waste residue by 400,000 tons and chemical oxygen demand by 6000 tons.
Aiming at optimizing regional economic structure and industrial structure, Shaanxi works out scientifically an economic development plan which coordinates with the environmental bearing capacity under the sufficient protection policy, integrating the resource superiority of the ecology and minerals in Qinling Mountain.
In the newly unveiled The Development Program of Recycling Economy Industry in South Shaanxi, three environmental-friendly industry plate: biotechnological processing industry sustained by biomedicine and ecological agriculture, the ecological tourist industry with humanities in Shaanxi and waters and mountains in Qinling as its cultural essence, Qinling National Park under construction as its carrier, the new materials industry taking concerted action with advanced manufacturing industry bases in central Shaanxi have paved the sustainable way for the leapfrog development of the strategy of South Shaanxi Breakthrough longing for years.
Last year, 3 national natural reserves and many recycling economy industrial parks were set up in Qinling area Shaanxi Province. With the drive of a batch of significant recycling economy industry programs, the second-mover advantages of Hanzhong, Ankang and Shangluo in South Shaanxi appear gradually. In 2009, the speed increase of aggregate economic volume reached 14.4 percent, exceeding the provincial growth speed for the first time.
The energy and chemical engineering industry covering half of the industry proportion of this province, is one of the competitive industries in Shaanxi, meanwhile, it entails higher requirement to the environmental bearing capacity. Faced with the contradictions between the beneficiation and fragile ecology in North Shaanxi and North Weihe River, on the one hand, Shaanxi accelerate the adjustment of the industrial structure of power source and the product structure utilizing high and new technology to renovate the traditional energy industry.
At the end of last year, a batch of large projects of deep conversion, such as Shenhua Dow Yulin recycling economy and coal comprehensive utilization, with the investment of the first period USD 18.6 billion, started one after another. New energy industries such as Solar Photovoltaic industry has sprang up rapidly, forming a capacity of 2000 tons of micro-electronics polysilicon and 600 megawatts of solar batteries and modules.
On the other hand, targeting at setting up a well field and producing green field, three projects, i.e. crude oil pipe transportation, waste water reinjection and the construction of clean and civilized well field have been promoted on the energy chemical engineering bases in North Shaanxi, investing over RMB 2 billion on environmental protection.
All the main well field managed not to discharge the crude oil wastewater out of the pond, down the mountain or into the river. More than 500 pollutant enterprises such as calcium carbide, coal carbonization and iron alloy were closed one after another and popularize the environmental technology in the production according to the idea of recycling economy, turning Shenfu area, which was used to called black triangle because of the bad pollution, into a gold triangle with a better and faster development in both economy and the society.
In addition, Shaanxi proactively brings forth new ideas in the long-acting restriction system on environment management. In 2009, Shaanxi initiated ecological compensation system on exploitation of resources and began to collect the compensation fee for water and soil erosion by exploiting of coal, oil and natural gas, bringing the ecological sequelae of resource exploitation under permanent control.
The optimizing actions for environmental plates of the Qinling Mountain, Weihe River and Danjing River , and the energy chemical engineering base has opened up new environmental bearing space for the sustainable development of the economy and society in Shaanxi.
A new highlight of Shaanxi s environment strategy is to strongly support and foster environmental protection industries characterized by clean production, recycling and environment friendly by depending on science and technology research and development. In recently years, while updating and adjusting industrial structure, Shaanxi has attached great importance to environmental protection industries to push forward economy. According to the requirement of coordinating science and technology resources reform models put forward in Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone Development Plan, Shaanxi has actively promoted a creative model of integration of production, learning and research. For instance, the blast furnace slag cement preparative technique researched and developed by Institute of Powder Engineering of Xi an University of Architecture and Technology has been popularized among more than ten large steel companies. With this technique, 12 million tons of blast furnace slag is digested, which not only transfers the original waste into low-cost and high-quality green cement and increases the economic benefit by RMB 1.2 billion, but also creates a environmental benefit of annually reducing 12 million tons of CO2 and saving 11 million tons of coals and 17 million tons of lime stones. For another instance, the environmental protection technique of making paper out of waste paper researched and developed by Xi an Jiaotong University together with enterprises has not only realized zero draining of waste water but also reduced the water consumption per ton paper to less than 3 m3 from the original 110 m3, a decrease of RMB 158 per ton paper cost. This technique has been fixed as key new environmental protection product by four national ministries and commissions. With the goal of integrating, creating and industrially popularizing similar mature and practical techniques, under the support of CAS and CAE, under the leadership of Shaanxi Development and Reform Commission, together with many large enterprise groups and research institutions of Shaanxi province, Shaanxi Recycling Economy Engineering Institute has been established. Its integration creation direction is focused on such environmental protection industries as energy and chemistry, ecological agriculture, dedusting and special water treatment, etc.
According to a principal of Department of Environment Protection of Shaanxi province, pushing by special supportive policies and a series of environmental protection technique integration creation platforms, more and more companies are actively engaging in environmental protection industries. For example, a number of environmental protection industry projects closely related to regional economy, such as North Shaanxi rams bottom carbon residue exhaust utilization, fruit juice production waste water processing biotechnology and diosgenin clean production technique, have made great progress, leading the total value of output of the provincial environmental protection industries up to RMB 40 billion.
Currently, Shaanxi is speeding up making Environmental Protection Industry Development Plan , giving special support to the key environmental protection enterprises by use of special fund.
Yuan Chunqing, Governor of Shaanxi province, said that Shaanxi would focus on 3 fields, namely large environment-protective and energy-saving equipments, resources integrated utilization equipments and new clean products, to foster 3 manufacturing bases, namely Central Shaanxi sewage treatment equipment industry and energy-saving equipment manufacturing base, Shaanxi coal chemical off-gas treatment and energy-recycling equipment manufacturing base and South Shaanxi slag integrated utilization equipments research base.
He also said that Shaanxi would establish 10 large environmental protection industry parks and strive to sustain the annual average increase rate of Shaanxi at 30 percent.
