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Effect of strengthened standards on Chinese ironmaking and steelmaking emissions

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 811–820 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

China has produced roughly half of the world’s steel in recent years, but the country’s iron and steel industry is a major source of air pollutants, especially particulate matter, SO2 and NOx emissions. To reduce such emissions, China imposed new emission standards in 2015 and promoted ultralow emission standards in 2019. Here we use measurements from China’s continuous emissions monitoring systems (covering 69–91% of national iron and steel production) to develop hourly, facility-level emissions estimates for China’s iron and steel industry. In turn, we use this data to evaluate the emission reductions related to China’s increasingly stringent policies. We find steady declines in emission concentrations at iron- and steelmaking plants since the 2015 standards were implemented. From 2014 to 2018, particulate matter and SO2 emissions fell by 47% and 42%, respectively, and NOx increased by 3%, even as the production increased by 14%. Moreover, we estimate that if all facilities achieve the ultralow emission standards, particulate matter, SO2 and NOx emissions will drop by a further 50%, 37% and 58%, respectively. Our results thus reveal the substantial benefits of the Chinese government’s interventions to curb emissions from iron and steel production and emphasize the promise of ongoing ultralow emission renovations.

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Fig. 1: Geographic and temporal distributions of Chinese iron- and steelmaking smokestack concentrations, 2014–2018.
Fig. 2: Emission intensities and total emissions for Chinese iron- and steelmaking facilities, 2014–2018.
Fig. 3: Emissions from Chinese iron- and steelmaking facility groups in 2018.
Fig. 4: Measures to meet the strengthened emission standards.

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Data availability

The CEAIS database that supports the findings of this study is available in Supplementary Tables 1–10 or at http://www.ieimodel.org/. Supplementary Table 2 presents a summary of the CEAIS dataset. The data used in the estimation for emission intensities and total emissions include the smokestack concentrations presented in Fig. 1, Supplementary Figs. 1, 2 and 5, and Supplementary Table 4, the flue-gas rates provided in Supplementary Tables 8 and 9, and the plant-level information provided in Supplementary Table 10.

Code availability

All computer codes generated during this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Wang (Associate Professor of Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for satellite data collection and R. Zhen (Professorate Senior Engineer of Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation Ltd.) for helpful discussions on data preprocessing. X.B. acknowledges support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFE0194500) and the National Research Program for Key Issues in Air Pollution Control (DQGG0209-07). L.T. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71971007). S.W. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71988101). X.C. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72032006 and 11771012).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Appraisal Center for Environment and Engineering, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Beijing, China

    Xin Bo

  2. School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China

    Xin Bo & Beihai Zhou

  3. School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China

    Min Jia & Jianhui Ruan

  4. School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Xiaoda Xue & Ling Tang

  5. The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London, UK

    Zhifu Mi

  6. Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shouyang Wang

  7. School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shouyang Wang

  8. School of Earth Science and Resources, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China

    Weigeng Cui

  9. School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Xiangyu Chang

  10. China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, China

    Guangxia Dong

  11. Department of Earth System Science, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Steven J. Davis

  12. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Steven J. Davis

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Contributions

X.B., L.T., Z.M. and S.W. planned the project. X.B., W.C. and X.C. processed and analysed the CEMS data. G.D., M.J. and X.X. compiled and analysed the facility-based information for Chinese iron- and steelmaking plants. S.W., M.J., X.X., J.R. and B.Z. conducted the experimental work. X.B., L.T. and Z.M. wrote the paper. S.J.D. polished the paper. All authors contributed to developing and writing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ling Tang, Zhifu Mi or Shouyang Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks Hongyou Lu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–5, Figs. 1–14 and references.

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Supplementary Data 1

Supplementary Tables 1–10.

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Bo, X., Jia, M., Xue, X. et al. Effect of strengthened standards on Chinese ironmaking and steelmaking emissions. Nat Sustain 4, 811–820 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00736-0

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