The Ongoing Environmental Push

China’s EPA recently issued a draft document called “Notice on the Implementation of Special Emission Limits for Air Pollutants in Beijing, Tianjin and the Surrounding Areas”. it’s part of the environmental inspections and total environmental improvement push.

This document covered 26+2 cities around Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei areas.

• For newly established projects, the special emission limit policy will be implemented from this June 1st.

• For existing enterprises, in the industries which have already contains the special emission limits in its emission standards for thermal power, steel, petrochemical, chemical, cement and boilers, the special emission limits for air pollutants will commence October 1, 2017,

• The special pollutants emission limit on coking chemical industry will be implemented from June 1st 2018.
• For the steel sintering and pellet industry, the standard revision of a single way to improve the special emission limits of air pollutants will begin from June 1st 2018, the implementation of standard amendments to the provisions of the special emission limits of air pollutants.

Current aluminum emission standard GB25465-2010 is shown in the below table:

The new aluminum emission standard GB25465-2010 modify table is shown below:

The new emission limit is much stricter. According to laws, for enterprises who can not meet the special emission limit in this policy, the enterprises have to limit the production, stop the production for remediation and receive punishment.

This notice covered 26+2 cities which includes the aluminum industry. If this policy will be taken in three months, it will certainly have impacts on smelters in Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Henan.

We got the information that CNIA is trying to communicating with MEP to suggest to postpone the implementation the new limits to October 2018, because this new policy will bring lots of financial and production pressure on smelters if this policy is applied this year.

Meantime, the third wave of environmental inspections has now finished.

Meanwhile, a new notice was issued from Ministry of Water Resources with the title “on strict water resources management to promote the supply side of the structural reform notice”. It will try to use strict water resources consumption and intensity control to promote the settlement of excess capacity, boost the supply side of the structural reform. Aluminum industry was covered in this notice.

• Notification requires to strengthen water abstraction and river sewage outfall, and strengthen the rigid constraints of water resources.

• From 2016 and onwards within 3 years, in principle to stop the acceptance of new coal projects, new capacity of the technological transformation projects and capacity of nuclear projects to increase the application for water abstraction; strict control of urea, ammonium phosphate, calcium carbide, caustic soda, polyvinyl chloride, soda ash, and other industries to limit water consumption; petrochemical industry and new refinery projects shall not apply for new water abstraction permit or river sewage outfall.

For the primary aluminum industry, water is never used in or near the pots, since the risk of explosion is too high. Water is used carefully in the casting plants when pouring off the metal into a shape - a rolling block, an extrusion log or a 25kg or other size ingot, water is used to cool the molten metal quickly. The water can be recycled after it has cooled down.

Water is used in alumina refinery and used in making green coke and anodes, but not in making calcined coke.

In our understanding, this water supply policy means two things - supply of clean water including careful management of the total supply, and 2) release of the water back into the system after the factory is finished with it. The second is probably more important than the first to smelters.

Since February till today, there are a few policies regards to the control of aluminum supply from both NDRC and MEP. We have seen not much action on real cuts yet. Whether these two new policies will be truly implemented or how seriously they will be treated remain unknown. We will update our subscribers in our reports when there is any further news.

picture source: https://news.sina.com.cn/o/2008-06-25/031914068473s.shtml