Economic Daily
Updated2022-03-23 06:01:57
Environmental Protection Equipment Industry to Strengthen Its Weaknesses
Reporter: Gu Yang
True technology industrial applications come from market demands. This is especially true for the environmental protection equipment manufacturing industry.
TheAction Plan for High-Quality Development of the Environmental Protection Equipment Manufacturing Industry (2022-2025) was officially released the other day. The document is the third one dedicated to the development of the environmental protection equipment sector following the 12thFive-Year Plan for the Development of the Environmental Protection Equipment Manufacturing Industry in 2012 and the Guidelines on Accelerating Development of the Environmental Protection Equipment Manufacturing Industry in 2017. What is the current state of environmental protection equipment sector in China? What efforts must be made to promote the high-quality growth of the sector? With these questions, our reporter has interviewed industry experts.
Overcoming the Industrialization Gap
According to the latest ranking of World Top 50 WaterCompanies published by GWI, an international environmental protection platform and the authoritative business intelligence provider of the global water industry, aside from industry giants like Veolia (France), Ecolab (the USA) and Grundfos (Denmark), Chinese water companies such as BEWG, Capital Eco-Pro Group and OriginWater, were on the top of the listing by comprehensive strength.
The fact that OriginWater had moved up 14 places on the list in the past five years has not cheered up Chairman Wen Jianping:Recent years have seen Chinese environmental protection equipment claiming breakthroughs in many key areas, notably improving the technology level and winning numerous national and global awards for core technologies and equipment. But the awkward reality is that made-in-China brands are struggling to win recognition from users. The high-end market, in particular, is still dominated by foreign brands.
“Take water treatment as an example. At present, all Chinese enterprises in the chip manufacturing, steel, power, and salt lake-based lithium extraction industries, and over 90% of the seawater desalination enterprises use foreign brand membrane equipment for industrial water treatment.” According to Wen Jianping, it is not that our independent brands are of poor product quality; in fact, we now outperform foreign counterparts in terms of many key technical indicators. Unfortunately, there still exists a wide industrialization gap in market application.
By“industrialization gap”, Wen Jianping refers to the disconnection between industrial R&D and industrial application in the Chinese environmental protection equipment industry. Because of it, many technical invention patents fail to be industrialized, and the level of industrialization is rather low. According to Fu Tao, president of the E20 Institute of Environment Industry and industry-university-research Center director at the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering of Peking University, research and design institutes focus on technological breakthroughs and engineering, and water and capital companies focus on commercialization, scale operation and branding. Nevertheless, there is no one promoting industrialization that lies in between, resulting in the disconnection.
Industry expertsindicate that China’s water treatment business is still at its early stage of industrialization. Enterprise rely more on experience for project construction management, bulking technical configuration and operation management. That poses objective barriers to the application of independently-developed environmental protection equipment. As a matter of fact, environment protection equipment in other fields also faces a similar dilemma to which a solution is badly needed through market consensus.
Addressing the“Three Imbalances”
Environment protection equipment manufacturing is an essential part of the green industry and a fundamental sector sustaining ecological civilization and green development. For over four decades, the industry has undergone an arduous course of growth and expansion.
Wang Yining, member of the National Strategic Emerging Industries Expert Advisory Committee and honorary chairman of China Association of Machinery Industry for Environmental Protection, said thattotal output of the environmental protection equipment manufacturing industry grew by 9.4% on average annually during the 13th Five-Year Period. Particularly, in 2021, total output of the industry reached up to 950 billion yuan and total number of enterprises engaged in the industry surpassed 10,000. Compared with the end of the 12th Five-Year Period, the annual output of the industry grew by 56.6% and total number of enterprises in the industry increased by 42.8% with significantly improved profit margin. The environmental protection equipment manufacturing business ranked the 13th among the 169 subsectors of the machinery industry.
However, the problem of inadequate innovation still features prominently in theenvironmental protection equipment manufacturing industry. Wen Jianping said frankly that the industry is most vulnerable in some high-end products, and its comprehensive level including the level of intelligence and digitalization, needs to be further improved. Especially it has been at a disadvantage in global competition. “For nearly two decades, the environmental protection equipment manufacturing sector has been putting more emphasis on engineering than on technology. There isn’t sufficient driving force for technical innovations, and the investment in continuous technical research and development is low.”
At the same time, environmental protection equipment manufacturing enterprises are large but not strong, or small but not specialized. The structural weakness of products is increasingly prominent. Unbalanced and insufficient development remains a weak area that restricts further growth of the industry. As far as Wang Yining sees it, the environmental protection equipment manufacturing industry is presently characterized by three “imbalances”: First, imbalance between the capacity for supplying key technological equipment and demands of major environmental improvement projects; second, imbalance between the rapidly expanding industrial scale and requirements for sustainable and healthy industry development; third, imbalance between the development level and requirements of becoming a pillar industry sustaining the national economy.
According to information,for quite some time, development of technology and equipment in China has been focused on practical, profitable fields in urgent demand on the market. Core technologies have been imported primarily from overseas. Introduction and cooperation are the main sources of technical development for Chinese enterprises. However, with elevated environmental protection standards in China, complex scenarios of environmental pollution, and foreign blockage on new technologies, it is no longer feasible for enterprises to make secondary innovation based on imported technologies.
“Based on new demands for the environmental protection equipment industry in the new era and the weaknesses hindering its development, the Action Plan has devoted a special section to elaborating on the key areas of breakthrough for core technologies and equipment. To meet the new demands for environmental protection in the 14th Five-Year Period, the Action Plan has chartered the course for future development that centers on the reduction of pollution and carbon emission, and synergy creation,” said Wang Yining.
Building a Creative Whole-process Ecological Chain
According to the ActionPlan, by 2025, China’s environmental protection equipment industry would generate an output value of up to 1.3 trillion yuan. Wang Yining indicated that environmental protection equipment made in China could basically meet the demand of the home market, and that their prices have obvious competitive advantages compared to similar foreign products. Therefore, the future development of the industry should focus on promoting the high-quality growth.
At the recent Mobilization Meeting for Implementing the Spirit of the National Two Sessions and Discussion on “Learning, Innovation and Development” of China’s Ecological and Environmental Protection Industry, Guo Chengzhan, president and Party Committee secretary of China Environmental Protection Industry Association, said the industry needed to adopt a new approach toward the ecological and environmental protection industry (including development idea, system and mechanism, technology & equipment, service model and spiritual culture) and promote composite, integrated and high-quality development of the industry through high technologies.
“It is estimated that by 2025, China’s sewage treatment sector will have a size of 10 billion yuan. That poses a new topic for the industry; how to transform scientific and technological findings into real productive forces will become the key to achieve innovative development of the industry.” Wen Jianping said that the environmental protection equipment is at the core of the environmental protection industry. For the environmental protection industry to realize green transformation, the key is to achieve high-quality development of the environmental protection equipment industry. Research and transformation may go hand in hand at manufacturers of environmental protection equipment to create a whole-process ecological chain that features original research, technological breakthrough and industrialization of research findings.
To this end, the Action Plan proposed that we take into consideration the currentdevelopment of technical equipment in various subsectors of the environmental protection equipment manufacturing industry and the characteristics of pollution treatment in China to set priorities in four areas: scientific and technological innovation, product supply, industry structure, and development model. To be specific, we should make technological innovations to shore up our weaknesses, improve product supply capabilities to strengthen our strong points, adjust industrial structure to pool advantages and transform the development model to bolster the growth momentum.
“Faced with both challenges and opportunities, there is a lot to be done for people like us in the ecological and environment protection business.” Cheng Hanfei, vice chairman of the Urban Sewage Treatment Branch of China Association of Environmental Protection Industry and chief engineer at MCC Ecological and Environmental Protection Group advised that we build an industrial cooperation platform the way we created Industrial Internet to pool the production factors and resources and achieve collaborative innovation. He further suggested that we improve the resilience of the industrial chains and supply chains, and create and share values together to truly turn talent resources and technological advantages into industrial advantages and the economic advantages for competing on the global market.
Gu Yang
Editor in Charge: Zhang Aolin
