Zhejiang comprehensively builds the country's first collaborative innovation zone for pollution and carbon reduction
In September 2022, Zhejiang Province became the country's first provincial-level collaborative innovation zone for pollution reduction and carbon reduction.
How did Zhejiang do in answering this "National Pilot" exam paper? Firmly anchored in the "double carbon" goal, Zhejiang is coordinating to promote carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and growth. It is system-oriented, practice-oriented, and innovation-driven. It is racing from "green" to "new". On the high-quality development track, the pace is steady and powerful.
Improve the institutional system and establish an all-round coordination mechanism
Zhejiang Province has strengthened coordination of source prevention and control and established a source access mechanism. Carbon emission levels will become an important measure of whether a project can be launched.
Projects must be approved, and enterprises must highlight their "carbon accounts". Recently, when preparing the "Project Feasibility Study Report", the person in charge of a Zhejiang Energy Company, which was preparing to expand the project in Jiaxing Pinghu Dushan Port Economic Development Zone, found that there was an additional item "Carbon Emission Intensity Data Calculation" in the table.
According to previous regulations, only four pollutants (chemical oxygen demand, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds) are needed to be filled in the feasibility study report submitted by enterprises. This is the first time for a company that data on "carbon emissions" needs to be filled in before settling in. Pinghu relies on the integration and improvement of the city's provincial-level and above development zones (parks) to pilot the total carbon emission control target in the regional planning and environmental assessment of the Dushan Port Economic Development Zone.
"The advantage of this is that carbon emissions can be estimated and controlled in advance to better lock in the 'carbon footprint'. Now that carbon has rules to follow, the path to carbon control will be smoother." Cui Bin, from the Environmental Impact Assessment and Emissions Management Section of Pinghu Branch of the Jiaxing City Ecological Environment Bureau, said.
As early as 2021, Zhejiang issued the "Guidelines for the Compilation of Carbon Emission Evaluation of Construction Projects in Zhejiang Province (Trial)", which included carbon emission evaluation in the environmental impact assessment of construction projects in nine key industries including steel, thermal power, building materials, chemicals, petrochemicals, nonferrous metals, papermaking, printing and dyeing, and chemical fiber. At the same time, the multi-dimensional source access model of "project environmental assessment + carbon assessment","planning environmental assessment + carbon assessment" and "three lines, one single + carbon assessment" has been implemented. So far, 615 construction projects have been evaluated for carbon emission, achieving 11 districts. Full coverage of the city.
How to conduct a quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of the progress of pollution and carbon reduction? In Zhejiang, the pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy index has become a new yardstick to measure the comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation of localities and industries.
In June 2022, Zhejiang took the lead in releasing the pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy index in the country, establishing 6 first-level indicators, 15 second-level indicators and 27 third-level indicators from three dimensions: synergy effect, synergy path, and collaborative management. At the beginning of 2023, after the integrated reform of the pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy index, it integrated six indexes including the air quality index, the comprehensive water quality pollution index, the ecological environment status index, the waste-free index, and the biodiversity friendliness index, and jumped to version 2.0. The index evaluation results are updated quarterly and included in the effectiveness assessment of the fight against pollution in cities divided into districts and the assessment of Beautiful Zhejiang. As of the end of April 2024, the province has publicly released 7 batches of evaluation results of the pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy index, playing a role in leading the construction of innovation zones.
"Digital Intelligence" controls carbon. Zhejiang has also built a digital intelligence "headquarters" for pollution reduction and carbon reduction, launched the "Pollution Reduction and Carbon Reduction Online" application scenario, and established "one account","one examination","one chain management" and "one integration". There are six sub-scenarios of "integrated decision-making" and "one-click", forming a closed-loop management system of "online monitoring, index evaluation, over-standard warning, technical services, and rectification and improvement". At present, it has been fully applied at the provincial, municipal and county levels, and has been included in more than 23,000 managed enterprises, integrating 52.757 million pollutant data and 491,000 carbon emission data.
Promote pilot practice and explore multi-level collaborative models
As a new force in the synergy of pollution reduction and carbon reduction, how can industrial parks win the "gold content" of development with their ecological "green content"? Starting from the "chain" and pushing the industry towards a "green new high", now in Zhejiang, this problem has an "optimal solution".
Walking into the national-level "green park"-Ningbo Petrochemical Economic Development Zone, a 37-kilometer public pipe corridor is like a long silver steel dragon crisscrossing between enterprises in the park. Sinopec Zhenhai Refining and Chemical is connected to more than 20 enterprises in the park by pipe corridors, and supplies more than 8 million tons of materials to each other every year, accounting for nearly 90% of the raw materials used in the park.
"The petrochemical industry is an industry with high relevance and strong driving force. To achieve high-quality industrial development, we must smooth the large circulation and adhere to the coordinated development of the industrial chain." According to the relevant person in charge of the Petrochemical Zone, more than 10 kinds of products such as ethylene, propylene, and aromatic hydrocarbons produced by Zhenhai Refining and Chemical are supplied to other enterprises in the park for production. Hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and chlorine gas from multiple enterprises are mutually supplied to build a large oil refining/large ethylene as the leader and organic chemical materials, synthetic materials, and fine chemicals as the focus, promote the recycling of resources.
Zhejiang focuses on key industries such as petrochemicals, chemicals, and textiles, and explores a collaborative model for pollution reduction and carbon reduction across the entire industrial chain that includes source prevention and control, process control, terminal management, and resource and energy recycling. It has built 61 pilot projects for pollution reduction and carbon reduction collaborative parks, all-round leveraging green development momentum.
Under the combination of "increasing green and adding gold", cities have also become the main front for synergy and efficiency improvement in pollution reduction and carbon reduction. Hangzhou City hosted the Asian Games to improve the construction of green infrastructure and diversify the paths of pollution reduction and carbon reduction; Jiaxing City strives to transform the "two high" industries into a green and low-carbon circular modern industrial city... The province has selected 10 and 41 pilot cities for pollution reduction and carbon reduction in cities and counties (cities, districts) to explore pollution reduction and carbon reduction in different types of cities such as modern international large cities, industrial, digital economy and ecologically sound cities. Carbon reduction collaborative path.
"Our province also focuses on high-pollution and high-carbon emission industrial industries and collects collaborative technical guidelines for pollution reduction and carbon reduction from the whole society. It has publicly released 8 technical guidelines to provide insights into the production processes, pollutants and greenhouse gas production and emission nodes and impacts of key industries. Analyze factors, pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy links and technologies, and look forward to future technology research and application directions, and provide reference for enterprises to carry out collaborative work on pollution reduction and carbon reduction." The relevant person in charge of the Comprehensive Department of the Department of Ecology and Environment of Zhejiang Province introduced.
Zhejiang is focusing on establishing a low-carbon pilot system and carrying out the exploration of a city-park-enterprise multi-level collaborative model for pollution reduction and carbon reduction. Collaborative pilot and benchmark projects for pollution reduction and carbon reduction have sprung up like bamboo shoots after rain, and are "blooming everywhere" in Zhejiang.
A set of eye-catching data shows the results-the province has promoted the construction of 234 collaborative benchmark projects for pollution reduction and carbon reduction. After the implementation of all benchmark projects, it is expected to reduce the production of air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds by 140,000 tons per year., reducing the production of water and environmental pollutants such as chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen by 34,000 tons, recycling 7.05 million tons of solid waste such as waste activated carbon and waste organic solvents, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 13.05 million tons. Saved corporate costs by 4.7 billion yuan.
Carry out technological innovation and form a multi-field collaborative technology path
To promote green, low-carbon and high-quality development, scientific and technological innovation is the key support. At the Jiaxing Port Industrial Sewage Treatment Plant, wastewater from all industrial enterprises in China Chemical New Materials (Jiaxing) Park is transported here through pipelines for purification. Different from other sewage treatment plants, sulfur-containing waste lye, originally regarded as a pollutant by upstream enterprises, has become the "drug trigger" of sewage treatment here-a carbon source, realizing enterprises 'burden reduction, pollution reduction, and environmental pressure reduction."three-win". Behind the gorgeous turn of wastewater is a technology called "thiocarbon denitrification".
"This technology uses sulfur-containing waste alkali liquor from the upstream PDH industry as a sulfur source for autotrophic denitrification, thereby replacing the carbon source and converting the carbon dioxide generated during the heterotrophic denitrification process into sulfate. On the basis of reducing the dosing of its own carbon source chemicals, it further reduces the sewage treatment costs of upstream enterprises and forms a collaborative management model for upstream and downstream enterprises." The relevant person in charge of the Port Area Branch of the Jiaxing City Ecological Environment Bureau introduced that through the simultaneous implementation of coordinated measures such as biogas power generation and digital management and control, it is estimated that pollutant emissions can be reduced by 1900 tons and carbon dioxide by 18,000 tons per year, operating costs will be reduced by approximately 70 million yuan, and sewage treatment costs will be saved for upstream enterprises by 25 million yuan.
Zhejiang regards the coordinated management of environmental factors as an important path to reduce pollution and carbon, coordinates emission reduction requirements in multiple fields such as water, gas, and solid waste, and vigorously promotes governance processes and technological innovation.
In the field of water environment, Zhejiang focuses on key areas of collaborative management of water environment pollutants and greenhouse gases such as water quality improvement in river basins, upgrading and renovation of sewage treatment plants, and collaborative management of industrial wastewater and agricultural wastewater, and carries out collaborative technological innovation; in the field of atmospheric environment, it focuses on Industrial waste gas and carries out technological innovation in collaborative emission reduction of atmospheric environmental pollutants and greenhouse gases; In the field of solid waste, we focus on domestic waste, industrial solid waste, agricultural solid waste, etc., and carry out technological innovation in collaborative emission reduction of solid waste and greenhouse gases.
The green wind is blowing, and models of pollution reduction and carbon reduction are constantly emerging.
Pinghu adopts the "ecological ditch +" collaborative management model of rice field water withdrawal to connect and open up the existing 17 retired fish ponds, promote the integrated circulation and reuse of water flow in irrigation areas, and achieve zero emission of "tail water" from farmland; Wenzhou Carry out technological innovation on the "green island" for VOCs management in the shoe industry, establish a decentralized adsorption-centralized regeneration activated carbon method VOCs management system, and achieve a significant improvement in the level of waste gas control and activated carbon regeneration cycles; Chian Town, Yiwu City, has built an external social circulation system for the recovery, disposal and utilization of waste paper, domestic garbage, urban sludge and other resources in the whole society, as well as solid waste such as papermaking sludge and waste incineration waste residue between upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial park. The in-park recycling system for classified treatment and recycling of waste resources achieves "zero waste". Countless vivid scenes of "green and low-carbon transformation" are being staged all over Zhejiang.
In the next step, Zhejiang Province will further implement various tasks in the construction of a collaborative innovation zone for pollution reduction and carbon reduction from the three levels of institutional system, model creation and scientific and technological innovation, and make further efforts in promoting work, deepening model creation, and improving synergy and efficiency, and hand over a high score answer sheet.
