Policy Drives Trillion-Yuan Investment; Construction Machinery Industry Accelerates Environmental Protection

　　As a country's basic pillar industry, the machinery industry occupies an important position in the national economy. In China, the construction machinery equipment industry accounts for a very large share of pollution, and compared with developed countries, our pollution index remains high. Although China has also been promoting "energy conservation and emission reduction" measures, these only treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, because they involve only individual products and have not formed a strategy. The arrival of smog has once again sounded the alarm for us, and the "green strategy" has become an inevitable trend in the development of the engineering industry.

　　It is worth noting that the state has strengthened guidance and support in enterprise technological innovation and structural adjustment. The industry has achieved results in consolidating foundations, tackling high-end products, and strengthening management, and a number of major equipment and key technologies have made breakthroughs; the state has provided relevant tax exemption policies, collaborative platform construction, and support for technological transformation projects, which is conducive to enhancing enterprises' innovation capabilities; after last year's adjustment, the industry has made progress in destocking; the momentum of excessive capacity growth has been curbed, and the momentum of enterprise capacity expansion has slowed. Some industry enterprises had previously formulated plans for three-phase plants, but recently reduced them to one-phase or two-phase plans. Industry enterprises are focusing their main energy on technological transformation and scientific research and development. Such hard work on internal strength has greatly improved the product quality of domestic brands.

　　It is reported that last week the Ministry of Environmental Protection approved several new environmental protection industry standards, including the cement industry emission standard that kiln tail and kiln building emissions shall not exceed 20 milligrams. Therefore, more than 400 cement enterprises on the market currently need to be upgraded, and the investment in dust removal facility renovation for a single cement enterprise reaches 14 million yuan, with denitrification facilities at 5 million yuan. In addition, in the middle of next year, particulate matter emission standards in 19 cities will become stricter, driving investment in related facilities, including equipment renovation required in the steel smelting and papermaking industries. In addition, water environment quality standards and soil standards have also been formulated.

　　According to data from the China Association of Environmental Protection Machinery, the industrial output value of the environmental protection equipment manufacturing industry from January to September was 160 billion yuan, an increase of 19.07%, and the export delivery value was 6.979 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.17%, ranking first among the 61 export industries in the machinery industry. The "Twelfth Five-Year" Development Plan for Environmental Protection Equipment released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2012 proposed that by 2015, the total output value of environmental protection equipment will reach 500 billion yuan.

　　China's machinery industry currently has nearly 50,000 production enterprises, and the intensity of survival-of-the-fittest competition can be imagined. In order to remain invincible in fierce competition, under the combined effect of market demand and policy guidance, some construction machinery enterprises have already taken the lead in seizing opportunities in energy conservation and environmental protection.

　　Facing the explosive growth of China's environmental protection equipment market, many experts have expressed concern that once policies guide and encourage investment, funds from all sides will rush in, and it is highly likely to repeat the mistake of the photovoltaic industry, which went from prosperity to decline. On the one hand, in the production of energy-saving and environmental protection equipment, policy stimulus may lead to overcapacity due to low production thresholds, which is a potential risk that needs to be guarded against. On the other hand, the use of energy-saving and environmental protection equipment is more closely related to technical services, including whether environmental protection equipment is used and the severity of penalties for violations, as well as the government's institutional arrangements and administrative management level in environmental protection policies.

　　Industry experts said that in the development process, the energy-saving and environmental protection industry should pay attention to aligning with the market and avoid being driven by policies into great-leap-forward-style development. From the government level, first, management should be standardized to end the disorderly and chaotic state of the environmental protection industry. The standardization of environmental protection technology products should be accelerated, that is, technical specifications, product standards, and enterprise standards for the environmental protection industry should be formulated, and in some cases national mandatory standards should also be formulated. The environmental protection market should be cleaned up, rectified, and standardized to form a long-term regulatory mechanism. Second, funds should be guided into enterprises with high-level technology research and development, which will help enhance the core competitiveness of China's energy-saving and environmental protection industry and realize the transformation and upgrading of the environmental protection equipment industry from manufacturing to services.