Recently, Environmental Protection of Guangdong Province published the Consultation Paper in Respect of Guangdong’s 2018-2020 Three-year Action Plan for Winning the Blue Sky War  (Consultation Paper). It has been revealed that, the Paper is collecting comments. The interested parties could submit for consideration information of the Paper to gddaqichu@163.com by 1th August.

Actually, earlier in 7th May, Environmental Protection of Guangdong Province had released Guangdong’s 2018 Work Plan for Winning the Blue Sky War(hereinafter referred to 2018 Work Plan). Compared to 2018 Work Plan, the new Paper has made several adjustments. 

For example, 2018 Work Plan encourages the ceramic companies to switch coal to gas and includes this issue in the ceramic companies’ technological upgrading. As for the Paper, it calls for the ceramic companies to take a control over clean emissions rather than just switching coal to gas. 

In Guangdong province, 7 cities will implement the plan for the control over clean emissions in building ceramic industry, which means that 976 production lines should be rectified. Of all, 332 in Foshan, 264 in Zhaoqing, 169 in Qingyuan, 91 in Jiangmen, 20 in Zhuhai, 14 in Dongguan, 4 in Shaoguan. 

In 2018 Work Plan, Heyuan and Yunfu, these two cities should finish the retification of production lines by 2020. However, the Plan allows these two cities to incrementally advance the retification. The Plan also requires the ceramic companies to switch coal to gas or use high effective measures to reduce the nitrogen oxide emissions and sulfur dioxide emissions to 100mg/m³ and 30mg/m³respectively. Besides, the Plan also claims that, by 2020, several cities like Zhuhai, Foshan, Shaoguang, Dongguan, Zhaoqing and Qingyuan, have to finish the retification over clean energy of building ceramic industry.

The Plan also says that, by the end of 2020, the gas pipeline will cover 21 cities of Guangdong province. The Pearl River Delta will build the network of gas pipeline to supply the gas to the concerned industrial parks and key industries and the gas consumption will reach over 28 billion m³. At that time, the gas supply could increase to 50 billion m³. The new gas will be used to replace the coal using in furnaces and kilns and help to lower the gas price.