Zhou Hongchun, DRC

2016-12-30

Heating supply project is one of the municipal public facilities for urban and rural areas. Promoting clean heating in the northern part of China in winter is crucial for the revolution of energy production and consumption and of rural lifestyle. It’s also related to the living standard of the people. We need to increase the share of clean heating supply by following the guiding principle that the enterprise should play the leading role shored up by government support. Such an increase would lead to rise in price, but that should not go beyond the affordability of the residents.

First, heating supply is the symbol of the new type of urbanization. China ranks the first in urban central heating system. According to relevant reports, 16 provinces in the northern part and 330 cities and towns across China provide central heating, accounting for only 25% of all heating demands. As a result, people’s needs and comfort in terms of different social groups are hard to be met.

Second, haze occurring during the heating season is related to coal-burning. Haze pollution is much higher in heating seasons than in non-heating seasons. Control and prevention of haze essentially needs the reduction of total pollution discharges through measures including purification of coals used for heating, diversification of heat sources, promoting the interconnection of heat supply networks used by enterprises and the government, implementing heat metering, and raising market access threshold to make the industry become more centralized.

Third, reform on heating supply system should be promoted. 1. The green development awareness should be integrated with the whole process of heating supply reform in order to guide green market demand and improve the intelligence level of the heating industry. 2. Relevant laws and regulations on heating supply should be established and design standards should be modified in line with the Law on Energy Conservation. 3. Innovations should be made in green heating technologies. 4. Improvements should be made in supportive policies including electricity price subsidies, government purchases and product certification. 5. Efforts need to be made to strengthen supervision over energy saving and heating energy consumption of newly-constructed buildings.

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