Steel town's trading platform reduces capacity, smog
- By Zhang Lulu
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E-mail China.org.cn, January 24, 2017
A county-level steel capacity trading platform, the first of its kind in China, has proved helpful in cutting excess production and easing the smog burden faced by the northern Chinese town Wu'an.
![Hongrong Steel dismantled a 620 cubic meter blast furnace. [Photo by Zhang Lulu/China.org.cn]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20170124/f44d307d90cc19f1319f14.jpg "Hongrong Steel dismantled a 620 cubic meter blast furnace. [Photo by Zhang Lulu/China.org.cn]") |
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Hongrong Steel dismantled a 620 cubic meter blast furnace. [Photo by Zhang Lulu/China.org.cn] |
The town, a major steel town in Hebei Province, has come under pressure in recent years as the country became determined to reduce excess capacity and combat incessant smog. Hebei is both a steel powerhouse and a smog-filled province - home to one fourth of the country's steel output and more than half of the country's most air-polluted cities.
The province has carried out massive capacity reduction projects since 2013. Under the plan, the town of Wu'an had to reduce a total of 8.36 million tons of steel from 2013 to 2017, roughly one fourth of its capacity in 2012.
After reducing only one third of the required capacity from 2013 to 2015, the town came up with a trading platform for steel capacity in 2016, where its 16 steel plants can trade their capacity reduction quota, according to Meng Tianzeng, chief of the local bureau of development and reform commission.
Under the platform, each of the town's steel factories has to meet the capacity reduction target set by the government, which is dependent on their respective size of equipment and capacity in 2012. Plants that are operating well can buy capacity reduction quotas from plants that are under pressure, Meng said.
Hongrong Steel, one of the town's steel plants, dismantled last September a 620 cubic meter blast furnace. The 670,000 tons of capacity was traded via the platform.
A total of 3.84 million tons of steel capacity was slashed in 2016, according to Meng. That is more than double the capacity reduced in the three years before introducing the platform.
Further to preparing the town to meet the capacity reduction targets, the trading platform also helps ease the smog problem. The town registered 24 days of heavily polluted days throughout 2016, a reduction of 57 days from the year before, he said.
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