【Summary description】"If the new standards are strictly followed, almost all steel companies in China currently do not meet the standards. Shen Wenrong, president of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Metallurgical Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the board of Shagang Group, told reporters.

"If the new standards are strictly followed, almost all steel companies in China are currently not up to standard." Shen Wenrong, chairman of the Metallurgical Chamber of Commerce of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and chairman of the board of Shagang Group, told reporters. On January 1, 2015, a new environmental law came into effect, increasing penalties for illegal emissions, such as daily fines.

From the same date, the steel industry must implement a series of eight series of pollutant emission standards related to the steel industry issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2012. This set of standards covers the entire process of steel production and significantly increases emission limits on the basis of the old standards, setting stricter special emission limits for pollutants in environmentally sensitive areas. Zhao Xizi, former honorary president of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Metallurgical Chamber of Commerce, told reporters that the new environmental pressure may lead to the "rapid death" of some steel companies.

Ji Gang, director of the energy and environmental protection department of Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group, told reporters that to meet the new standard, the operating cost of environmental protection per ton of steel will rise to 200 yuan. At present, the environmental protection operating costs of most small and medium-sized steel enterprises are only 30 to 40 yuan per ton, and the enterprises that do better are only about 100 yuan.

Technology is also a big threshold. For example, the new standard sets high requirements for special NOx emission limits for coke oven chimneys, but there are currently no readily available technical means to achieve this on the domestic and foreign markets.

The practicality of some environmentally friendly technologies has also been questioned. For example, the use of activated carbon technology can well realize the desulfurization and denitrification of the steel mill sintering machine, but such a set of technical equipment requires about 400 million yuan, and the annual operating cost needs 200 million yuan, and the sintering machine itself is only 200 million yuan.

Jigang said that TISCO's environmental operating expenses have reached the highest level in the industry, at 180 yuan per tonne, but in April 2015, TISCO received the first daily fine issued by the Taiyuan Environmental Protection Bureau amounting to 1.65 million yuan. Some industry insiders and experts interviewed believe that environmental protection fees such as pollution discharge should be partly used to reward enterprises that do a good job in environmental protection. But steel companies rarely enjoy such incentives at present. For example, there are subsidies for the desulfurization and denitrification of power plants, but there are no relevant subsidies for the desulfurization and denitrification of steel companies. We need the top-level design so much. Shen Wenrong said that the government should consider supporting enterprises' environmental protection work from the perspective of finance and taxation. For example, for enterprises that actively do environmental protection, the value-added tax will be reduced from 17% to 12%, or the income tax will be reduced from 25% to 15%.

The technical challenges are more complex. Cheng Jijun, director of the Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Center of the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, told reporters that before the introduction of the new emission standards for the steel industry by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2012, research funds were relatively lacking, and although the industry had many discussions, there was no basic consensus in many aspects. "Relatively hasty introduction" has caused some standards to be out of touch with reality.

He believes that it is time to remedy this, on the basis of the new standards, use financial funds to integrate domestic research forces, introduce an environmental protection technology guidance catalog, and find out that steel companies should meet the new environmental protection standards