Recently, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Completely, Accurately and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept to Achieve Carbon Neutrality work", the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the State Administration of Market Regulation, and the National Energy Administration issued the "Several Opinions on Strict Energy Efficiency Constraints to Promote Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction in Key Areas" (Development and Reform Industry [2021] No. 1464), and issued the "Action Plan for Promoting Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction by Strict Energy Efficiency Constraints in Key Metallurgical and Building Materials Industries (2021-2025)". (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction"), which has a significant impact on the cement industry.
Cement is divided into high energy consumption and high emission projects, and is a key industry for energy conservation and carbon reduction and carbon peaking. How the "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" introduced this time will affect the transformation and upgrading of the cement industry, and how cement enterprises respond to the adjustment of the national energy structure, is the key to the high-quality development of the cement industry, and it is also an important measure to achieve carbon peaking and energy conservation and carbon reduction. To this end, the reporter interviewed Li Chen, deputy secretary general of the China Cement Association.
Reporter: Since the "13th Five-Year Plan", what achievements have been made in China's cement industry in energy conservation and carbon reduction?
Li Chen: China's cement industry has achieved remarkable results in energy conservation and carbon reduction. Since the "13th Five-Year Plan", the cement industry has increased its efforts in scientific and technological innovation, implemented energy-saving transformation, and promoted quality and efficiency improvement, compared with 2015, the comprehensive energy consumption of cement clinker per ton of cement clinker of enterprises above designated size in 2020 fell by 3.6%. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020, the energy efficiency "leader" of the key energy-using industries, the comprehensive energy consumption of comparable clinker in cement enterprises is the lowest 91.75kgce/t, and the comprehensive energy consumption of comparable clinker of the listed enterprises is basically within 99kgce/t. According to the existing process conditions and theoretical heat consumption calculations, the comprehensive energy consumption of comparable clinker below 95kgce/t belongs to the international leading level. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the cement industry effectively alleviated the contradiction of serious overcapacity in cement through structural energy-saving and carbon reduction means such as staggered peak production, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 1.53 billion tons, and saved more than 100 million tons of coal.
Reporter: The "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" puts forward stricter requirements for the cement industry. How should the cement industry do a good job in carbon peak carbon neutrality in accordance with the requirements, and strictly enforce energy efficiency constraints to promote energy conservation and carbon reduction?
Li Chen: To do a good job in energy conservation and carbon reduction, we must combine the relevant policies and newly revised national standards that have been intensively introduced recently to make overall plans. The "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" requires that by 2025, the proportion of production capacity in the cement industry that will reach the benchmark level will exceed 30%, the overall energy efficiency level of the industry will be significantly improved, the carbon emission intensity will be significantly reduced, and the green and low-carbon development capacity will be significantly enhanced. The benchmark level is 100kgce/t for the comprehensive energy consumption of comparable clinker, and the benchmark level is 117kgce/t for the comprehensive energy consumption of comparable clinker. The current energy efficiency requirements are about 5% to 7% higher than the overall level of the cement industry 10 years ago.
The introduction of the "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" reflects the two-pronged approach of energy efficiency constraints from the perspective of the development trend of the cement industry. On the one hand, the use of national mandatory standards to promote the withdrawal of low-quality and inefficient production capacity, which conforms to the overall deployment of the national energy structure adjustment; on the other hand, it strengthens the supervision of new projects and stock projects, creating conditions for enterprise mergers and acquisitions, which highlights that improving industrial concentration and promoting scale is an important means of industrial restructuring in the cement industry.
The newly revised GB 16780-2021 "Energy Consumption Limit for Cement Unit Products" (hereinafter referred to as the new version of GB 16780) will be implemented from November 1, 2022. The new version of GB 16780 determines the clinker comprehensive energy consumption level 3 (that is, energy consumption limit value / benchmark value) indicator as ≤117kgce/t, which is equivalent to the benchmark level in the "Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan". Combined with the data measured in the past three years, about 75% of the production line can meet the limit value requirements, and the remaining about 25% of the production capacity can be used as the main target for withdrawal. That is to say, whether it is in accordance with the "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" or the new version of GB 16780, if the technical transformation is not carried out in time, 25% of the production capacity, that is, more than 400 million tons of cement clinker production capacity, will face elimination and withdrawal. According to statistics, at present, China's daily output of 2500 tons and below scale cement clinker production line accounts for 28% of the total production capacity, although these production capacity parts can also meet the "energy conservation and carbon reduction action plan" and the new version of GB 16780 bottom line requirements, but to achieve scale, technological transformation of energy efficiency level improvement space and investment returns are limited.
The new version of GB 16780 determines the comprehensive energy consumption level 2 (that is, energy consumption access value) index of cement clinker unit products as ≤107kgce/t. According to statistics, about 20% of the production line can meet the requirements. During the revision process of the new version of GB 16780, it was proposed as the minimum requirement for energy consumption access for new construction and expansion cement projects. On May 30, 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Prevention and Control of Ecological Environment Sources in Construction Projects with High Energy Consumption and High Emissions" (Environmental Impact Assessment [2021] No. 45), which requires that new and expanded "two highs" projects should adopt advanced and applicable technology and equipment, and the material consumption, energy consumption and water consumption of unit products should reach the advanced level of cleaner production. The "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" has once again improved the energy consumption access conditions for new projects, which is equivalent to raising the energy consumption limit of new and reconstructed cement projects to the benchmark level, and is also the new version of GB 16780 cement clinker unit product comprehensive energy consumption level 1 (advanced value), that is, 100kgce/t. At present, about 5% of the country's production capacity can meet this requirement, and the "Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan" requires that by 2025, the comprehensive energy consumption of clinker with more than 30% of the production capacity is not more than 100kgce/t. This will greatly promote the cement industry to improve the technical level and reduce the total energy consumption and intensity in just 5 years.
However, with the increasingly tight resources, the continuous strengthening of energy consumption dual control, and the continuous advancement of the "double carbon" goal, the low-efficiency and low-quality cement production capacity that does not have the advantage of scale has a large carbon emission base per unit of product and high energy consumption, and it is difficult to meet the benchmark level of no more than 117kgce/t for clinker in the "Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plan" by increasing investment in energy substitution, energy conservation and emission reduction, and intelligentization.
Reporter: Cement is a "heavy-duty short-legged" regional product, and the Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction strengthens the supervision of new projects and existing projects, creating conditions for mergers and acquisitions of enterprises. Is it possible to further improve industrial concentration and large-scale production to achieve structural adjustment of the cement industry?
Li Chen: Driven by the Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction, local governments use industrial policies such as capacity replacement, mergers and acquisitions to improve industrial concentration, support advantageous enterprise groups, increase the withdrawal of inefficient cement production capacity, optimize the layout of production capacity, improve the industrial chain, and free up sufficient environment and energy consumption capacity for large-scale new cement projects supporting advanced processes and high-level equipment, leaving room for long-term development, which will become a model for the structural adjustment of the cement industry in the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
In fact, a new round of industrial restructuring of the cement industry marked by improving regional industrial concentration and large-scale intelligentization of new cement projects has long been launched under the impetus of "policy combination fist". The capacity replacement policy issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as a precondition for new cement clinker projects has been continuously tightened, effectively curbing the blind start of new projects. The normalized cement staggered production policy issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to reduce excess capacity and reduce the superposition of pollutants has created a good and predictable environment for the cement industry to operate stably according to market demand and under environmental constraints. Authorized by the State Council and promulgated by the National Development and Reform Commission, the "Catalogue for the Guidance of Industrial Structure Adjustment (2019 Version)" lists the new dry cement clinker production lines below 2,000 tons/day (except special cement production lines) and the cement grinding stations below 600,000 tons/year (exclusive) as restricted categories, and shall not be newly built and transformed within a limited period of time, and cement grinding equipment with a diameter of less than 3 meters (excluding) (except for the production of special cement) will be listed as a phased category, and shut down and withdrawn within a limited period of time. Some places have adopted stricter measures to promote the withdrawal of inefficient capacity. This year, the Leading Group for the Construction of the New and Old Kinetic Energy Conversion Comprehensive Pilot Zone in Shandong Province issued the "Implementation of the "Three Resolutes" Action Plan for the Province (2021-2022)" (Lu Kinetic Energy [2021] No. 3), which requires the full withdrawal and integration of cement clinker production lines with a daily output of 2500 tons and below by 2024.
From 2019 to 2020, the national cement industry announced a total of 59 capacity replacement projects, with a reduction capacity of about 18.28 million tons, and the average single-line scale of the new dry cement clinker construction project announced in 2020 was about 4900 tons per day. In the list of energy efficiency "frontrunner" cement enterprises in key energy-using industries, cement clinker production lines with a daily output of 4,000 tons and above account for nearly 80%.
In areas with good market demand such as metropolitan areas, the integration of production lines of 2500 tons per day and below will further improve the concentration of the regional cement industry, build a super-large-scale cement clinker project with a daily output of at least 4000 tons or even 8000 tons per day or more, relying on the cement clinker intelligent factory with continuous improvement of full labor productivity to form a green mine mining and repair - cement / sand and gravel aggregate base - high-quality commodity concrete station - prefabricated building green low-carbon industrial park - digital logistics park Complete industrial chain, Promoting energy efficiency to the benchmark level will be the trend of structural adjustment of the cement industry during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
It is believed that the "Action Plan for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction" uses the energy structure adjustment and industrial structure adjustment formed by energy efficiency constraints to promote the cement industry to achieve energy conservation and carbon reduction goals.
China Building Materials Daily reporter: Zhang Yanan
Editor-in-charge: An Xiaoguang
Proofreader: Jian Zhang
Supervisor: Han Fengfeng
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