Research Report on China’s Environmental Protection Industry

This report presents a full view of China’s environmental protection industry, provides analysis and forecast on market shares, competition, key players, import & export, upstream & downstream industries, barriers, industrial environment and policy trends, investment, R&D; introduces Chinese inspection & standards system; provides full forecasts to 2010 with key statistical data. This report covers all the key subdivision markets in China, including Dedusting, Thermal Power Desulphurization, Waste Gas Purification, Solid Waste Treatment, Sewage Treatment, Noise Treatment, Environment Monitoring and Environmental Service.

On the basis of initial predictions by the State Environmental Protection Administration, by 2010, the annual growth rate of China’s environmental protection industry will reach about 15%. Also by 2010, the total output of the environmental protection industry of China will reach RMB 880 billion Yuan (excluding the clean products), equal to about $120 billion dollars, accounting for 3.4% of GDP of that year. The output of environmental protection equipment will be RMB 120 billion Yuan, accounting for 13.6%, the output of environmental services will be RMB 100 billion Yuan, accounting for 11.4%, and the output of the utilization of resources will be RMB 660 billion Yuan, accounting for 75%.

After decades of development, the environmental protection industry in China has formed an industrial system with complete departments, wide range and certain scale, thus becoming the essential part of the national economic structure of China. According to estimations by the State Environmental Protection Administration, in 2006, the total annual income of the large scale units of the relevant environmental protection industry was about RMB 600 billion Yuan, up by 31.2% over 2004, accounting for 2.9% of the Gross Domestic Production in 2006 and being 2.3 times of the total investment amount of the environmental pollution control by the state of the same period. The profit realized was about RMB 52 billion Yuan and the total taxable amount was RMB 45 billion Yuan. In 2006, the relevant environmental protection industry had 35 thousand engaging units with 3 million employees accounting for 0.39% of employees over the whole country.

The environmental protection equipments (products), as the core of the environmental protection industry, had sales income in 2006 of about RMB 63 billion Yuan, up by 15% over the same time of the previous year, accounting for 10.5% of the total output of environmental protection. In 2007, its sales income in the first three quarters was RMB 51.218 billion Yuan, up by 36.85% over the same time of the previous year. The market demand of environmental protection equipment mainly concentrates on aspects such as urban sewage treatment, domestic waste treatment, industrial dedusting, desulphurization of thermal power plants and dangerous waste treatment.

Certain achievements have been obtained in China’s environmental protection technologies and equipment, and technologies of electrostatic precipitation and bag filters are at the most advanced level in the world. Sewage treatment can basically finish the production of technical equipment and supplementary equipment independently and has the relevant technical equipment entering into the international market. And the microporous noise elimination technology in the noise and vibration control technology has achieved an international level.
Due to the late start of the environmental protection industry which is currently at the developing stage, China’s environmental protection market is lagging behind about 20-years compared with the development situation of the environmental protection markets in Europe and America. Although the kinds of environmental protection products of China are relatively complete, the technology level of the key equipments and the core products is low, for example, in the aspect of sewage treatment technology, foreign countries have a complete set of treatment technologies including disinfection, nitrogen removal and mud treatment. As the single technology of sewage treatment has a rapid development in China, the level of the integration technology and the level of the product nationalization are relatively low. In addition, the scale of China’s environmental service industry is small and the ability to provide technological support for various fields is weak, which restricts the further development of the environmental protection industry in China to some extent.

In order to narrow the gap between China and developed countries, China will, in the future years, focus on the development of water pollution prevention technology and equipment, atmosphere pollution prevention technology and equipment, solid waste treatment technology and equipment, the environmental monitoring technology and equipment, the polluted field restoration technology, physical pollution control, special reagents and material, comprehensive utilization of resource, construction operation and consultation service of the pollution treatment facilities, the environmental service trade, etc.