Environmental protection policies reshape the steel industry and accelerate green transformation
Date:2024-11-25
In recent years, with the increasing awareness of global environmental protection, governments around the world have introduced strict environmental protection policies. As a traditional high-pollution and high-energy-consuming industry, the steel industry has been the first to be affected and is undergoing profound changes.
The implementation of environmental protection policies first forces steel companies to increase investment in environmental protection and upgrade and transform production equipment to meet emission standards. This undoubtedly increases the company's operating costs, but it also becomes an important opportunity to promote technological progress and innovation in the industry. For example, many steel companies More advanced steelmaking technologies, such as electric furnace steelmaking, have begun to be introduced and adopted. Compared with traditional converter steelmaking, it has significant advantages in reducing pollutant emissions and helps companies better meet environmental protection requirements.
At the same time, environmental protection policies have led to production capacity adjustments in the steel industry. A large number of small steel plants that did not meet environmental standards were forced to close, while large steel companies increased industry concentration through mergers and reorganizations and achieved optimal allocation of production capacity. This The process not only helps reduce excess production capacity and alleviate the contradiction between market supply and demand, but also enhances the competitiveness and sustainable development capabilities of the entire industry, and promotes the development of the steel industry in the direction of scale and intensification.
Recently, China's "Special Action Plan for Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction in the Steel Industry" has clarified the main goals, key tasks and safeguard measures for energy conservation and carbon reduction in the steel industry, which has had a profound impact on the development of the steel industry. In terms of production capacity regulation and output management In terms of control, crude steel output control will continue to be implemented in 2024. By the end of 2025, the proportion of production capacity above the industry's energy efficiency benchmark level will reach 30%, and production capacity below the energy efficiency benchmark level will need to complete technological transformation or be phased out. This will further optimize the production capacity structure of the steel industry and promote enterprises Improve production efficiency and energy efficiency.
The source control of new projects has also become stricter, and the energy-saving review and environmental assessment approval of fixed asset investment projects have been strengthened. New construction and reconstruction and expansion projects must reach the energy efficiency benchmark level and environmental performance A-level level, and the energy efficiency of major energy-consuming equipment must reach the advanced level of energy efficiency. . This ensures the greenness and efficiency of new production capacity in the steel industry from the source, and avoids low-level duplication of construction and waste of resources.
In order to speed up the transformation and upgrading of energy conservation and carbon reduction, steel companies are focusing on main processes, key links and key equipment, intensifying transformation and equipment updating, and promoting advanced technologies such as sintering flue gas circulation, large-scale pellet smelting, and belt roasters and universal equipment. Special equipment such as rolling mills, and accelerating the transformation and upgrading of general equipment such as motors, boilers, and oxygen generators. The utilization of residual energy throughout the entire process has also been strengthened. Through the orderly update of residual energy self-generation equipment, efficient utilization technologies such as ultra-high temperature and ultra-high pressure power generation have been actively promoted. , accelerating the application of high-temperature and high-pressure dry quenching, further improving the energy recycling rate and reducing the company's energy consumption and production costs.
In addition, environmental protection policies have also promoted the optimization of production processes in the steel industry, accelerated the increase in the proportion of short-process electric furnace steelmaking, and proposed that by the end of 2025, scrap steel utilization will reach 300 million tons, and the proportion of electric furnace steel production in crude steel production will strive to increase to 15%. Quantitative goals. At the same time, promote new low-carbon steel smelting models, accelerate the research, development and application of hydrogen-based direct reduction, hydrogen-rich smelting reduction and other technologies, continuously increase the proportion of new energy development and utilization in steel smelting, strengthen industry coupling to improve efficiency, and support the use of steel by-products Gas produces high value-added chemical products to achieve resource recycling and coordinated industrial development.
In terms of improving the level of digital management, steel companies have strengthened the monitoring, analysis and management of energy consumption and carbon emission data in the production process, strengthened the intelligent control of energy-using equipment and production processes, and determined that the numerical control rate of key processes in the steel industry will reach about 80% by the end of 2025. The goal. This will help enterprises more accurately grasp the energy utilization in the production process, discover and solve problems in a timely manner, further improve production efficiency and product quality, and enhance the market competitiveness of enterprises.
It is worth mentioning that the environmental protection policy of "supporting the good and eliminating the bad" has an increasingly prominent positive regulatory role in the development of the steel industry. In the future, the differentiated management policy of supporting the good and eliminating the bad will be clearer, and efforts will be further strengthened to encourage the advanced and spur the backward. Fully releasing advanced productivity through differentiated policies will prompt steel companies to continuously improve their environmental protection levels and comprehensive competitiveness, and promote the entire industry to develop in a higher quality and more sustainable direction.
In short, the impact of environmental protection policies on the steel industry is all-round and deep-seated. Although it has brought certain cost pressures and production adjustment challenges to enterprises in the short term, in the long term, it will undoubtedly promote the steel industry to achieve green and low carbon It is an important driving force for transformation, enhancing global competitiveness and moving towards high-quality development, laying a solid foundation for the sustainable development of the steel industry.
