Accelerating the construction of green petrochemical trillion level industrial clusters is the “pioneering” project for cultivating our city’s “246” trillion level industrial clusters. To this end, the Municipal Council has made “accelerating the development of green petrochemical trillion level industrial clusters” a key content of the Standing Committee’s special consultation.
Since February, the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has established a research group led by the Economic Commission, with more than 30 members of the CPPCC, experts and scholars from the civil construction, industrial and commercial associations, and economic sectors as the main focus. By leveraging its own advantages and conducting in-depth frontline investigations, the CPPCC has proposed highly targeted and actionable countermeasures and suggestions around four themes: green petrochemical industry planning and layout, coordinated development, essential support, and extension of the industrial chain.
Last May, our city sounded the call to build a “24.6” trillion billion level industrial cluster and issued a mobilization order for the high-quality development of the real economy, especially the advanced manufacturing industry, to create a blueprint for the next trillion yuan GDP growth.
-Strengthen overall coordination and optimize planning layout
Ningbo is one of the seven major petrochemical industry bases in China, with unique advantages in location, transportation, market, and industry. It undertakes an important strategic mission in maintaining national industrial and energy security. From the perspective of development history, Ningbo’s current economic strength and urban influence are inseparable from the petrochemical industry; From the perspective of future development, if we sing the “Double City Record” well, the petrochemical industry cannot be absent; From the perspective of its own development, whether the “24.6” trillion dollar industrial cluster can successfully land and whether the economic development goals can be achieved, the petrochemical industry must shoulder the heavy burden, be a pioneer, and take the lead.
Industrial development requires planning first.
At present, the petrochemical industry in our city is mainly concentrated in the three major areas of Zhenhai, Beilun, and Daxie. As of 2019, an area of 54.16 square kilometers has achieved a green petrochemical output value of 352.19 billion yuan, with a unit area output of 6.5 billion yuan per square kilometer.
During the research conducted by members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, it was found that there is still 74.4 square kilometers of planned space for the future petrochemical industry in our city. Excluding land such as mountains, rivers, roads, and ecology, based on the proportion of 80% of the planned space that is generally available, the actual available space for the green petrochemical industry in Ningbo in the future is about 60 square kilometers.
Can we ensure the achievement of our city’s trillion yuan green petrochemical target by fully utilizing these available spaces?
Benchmarking the current production level to achieve the trillion yuan target requires approximately 100 square kilometers of land space. Benchmarking the domestic first-class standard, achieving the trillion yuan target requires approximately 54 square kilometers of land space. Benchmarking the international advanced level, achieving the trillion yuan target requires approximately 43 square kilometers of land space. The committee members believe that considering factors such as the actual foundation of Ningbo’s petrochemical industry and technological progress in the industry, Based on the current production level of our city and the median value of 9 billion yuan per square kilometer of the domestic first-class standard, according to the available space, at best, we can only increase the output value by 540 billion yuan, and there is still a gap of 100 billion yuan in output value from the trillion yuan target.
During the research conducted by members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, it was found that there are currently some problems in the planning and layout of the green petrochemical industry in our city, mainly concentrated in three aspects: the layout is not centralized, and the utilization efficiency is not high; Incomplete regional planning and inadequate implementation; The development density is not strong, and the level of land intensive use is not high.
This is not only a deficiency in the layout of our city’s green petrochemical industry, but also a place where potential can be tapped in the future, “said a member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference who participated in the research. To benchmark the trillion yuan output value of the green petrochemical industry, implement spatial security, make maximum use of existing land, expand incremental space, and improve land allocation efficiency, the key lies in four articles: optimizing existing land, adjusting land properties, reclaiming land from the sea, and expanding adjacent areas.
To this end, members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference suggest that it is necessary to pay practical attention to three tasks in the implementation process of the green petrochemical industry planning and layout:
——Further unify ideological understanding. The 14th Five Year Plan period will be a period of concentrated release of China’s petrochemical production capacity. Coastal cities such as Dalian, Yantai, Zhoushan, and Zhanjiang are all increasing their efforts in the layout of the petrochemical industry. If Ningbo does not increase its efforts, expand its production capacity, or break through, it is likely to miss out on the new round of major national productivity layout strategic opportunities, which will affect the achievement of the trillions of green petrochemical goals. The whole city should further unify its thinking and raise awareness, and form a consensus and conscious action to fully pursue the trillion yuan goal of green petrochemical industry;
——Further strengthen overall coordination. Further clarify the functions of the area, make unified decisions, coordinate major issues such as the planning and layout of the green petrochemical industry, factor resources, and project recruitment, and promote the implementation of major petrochemical projects and the construction of key industrial platforms;
——Further clarify the functions of the area. Adhere to the guidance of “integrated industrial development, distinctive development positioning, and intensive spatial utilization”, and achieve each key block with its own focus.
-Promote the coordinated development of parks to form an industrial agglomeration ecosystem
The petrochemical industry has the basic characteristics of close industrial chain connection and high degree of industrial integration. Boosting resource integration and functional integration is an inevitable requirement for achieving a high-level leap in the petrochemical industry. A member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference pointed out that in order to build a green petrochemical trillion level industrial cluster and build a world-class petrochemical industry base in Ningbo, it is necessary to accelerate the comprehensive linkage development of the three major petrochemical parks in Zhenhai, Beilun, and Daxie, and form a highly integrated and powerful industrial agglomeration ecosystem.
Linkage development is urgent. How are the three major petrochemical parks in our city doing in terms of coordinated development? A member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference conducted in-depth frontline research and found that the three major parks in our city are relatively independent, with problems such as lack of agglomeration of development space, weak industrial linkage, and lack of joint construction of public facilities. They are unable to fully leverage the clustering advantages of the petrochemical industry, which hinders the improvement of the comprehensive competitiveness of the petrochemical industry and becomes a key weakness in building a top domestic and world-class petrochemical base.
Zhenhai District (Ningbo Petrochemical Economic and Technological Development Zone), Beilun District (Ningbo Petrochemical Economic and Technological Development Zone Petrochemical Block), and Daxie District (Daxie Development Zone) are all national level development zones, with the three major parks managed by Zhenhai District, Beilun District, and Daxie Management Committee. The three major parks have poor coordination in development planning, investment attraction, infrastructure construction, and other aspects, and urgently require high-level unified management.
The lagging construction of cross district public pipe corridors hinders the industrial chain circulation between parks. In recent years, the industrial linkage between regions in our city has become increasingly close, with a significant increase in the mutual transportation and supply of materials between enterprises and across regions. However, some enterprises use road tanker transportation between them. The coastal public pipeline corridor connecting the port terminals to the three major parks, as well as between the parks, has advantages such as large transportation volume, high safety factor, long service life, land conservation, low closed transportation losses, low energy consumption, and no emissions. It is urgent to increase coordination efforts and accelerate construction progress.
The safety emergency response capability of the park is not strong, and there is a lack of comprehensive joint construction and interaction. The physical isolation conditions of the three major parks are poor, and chemical and non chemical enterprises are mixed. It is difficult to control pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and it is difficult to implement closed management in the parks. Even in some closed managed parks, traditional methods such as paper passes are still relied on for pedestrian flow control.
At present, the single district comprehensive strength of the three major parks in our city is strong, and the industrial direction is also focused on. The support situation of service platforms such as industrial technology research institutes and industrial cluster promotion institutions has basically formed, laying a good foundation for the coordinated development of “1+1+1>3”.
Faced with the current situation, members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have issued a “prescription”: to comprehensively promote the coordinated development of the three major parks from three aspects: the overall pattern, arteries, and safety.
Firstly, strengthen institutional and mechanism innovation, and build a “big pattern” of three regional linkage.
Establish a unified leadership system at a high level, strengthen overall coordination in development positioning, planning, layout, and other aspects, concentrate efficient decision-making, optimize resource allocation, break administrative barriers, and hold onto the punches.
Seeking internal and external linkage improvement, using petrochemical industry as an important industrial support for deepening the integration of Ningbo and Zhouzhou, and building a world-class and world second largest petrochemical base with production capacity second only to Houston in the United States.
Implement industry access coordination, strengthen the overall coordination of facility joint construction, project attraction, and space evacuation, and avoid low-level homogeneous competition.
Secondly, accelerate the construction of coastal public pipeline corridors and smooth the “main artery” of the three zones’ linkage.
We need to establish a dedicated work team, plan engineering construction plans, and innovate a balance of benefits sharing and compensation. We will use the construction of coastal public pipeline corridors as a key breakthrough to solve port public construction supporting facilities, promote mutual supply and supply of materials, and open up industrial value-added space. We will strive for early project approval, implementation, and acceleration.
Once again, strengthen safety emergency management and ensure the “big security” of the three zones linkage. Safety first, development second “, by deploying standardized construction, implementing smart supervision, and jointly building emergency rescue forces, strengthening safety emergency collaborative governance, and providing a strong safety emergency collaborative governance, we provide a safety barrier for our city to build a green petrochemical trillion level industrial cluster.
-Strengthening the support of development elements by implementing both soft and hard measures
To achieve the development goal of a trillions level green petrochemical industry cluster in Ningbo, the current constraints are very obvious, with the three most important hard constraints being land, energy consumption, and pollution. In addition, there is also a soft constraint – the trade system.
Land is the primary element of industrial development. The members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference suggest actively seeking land use policies from higher-level departments, while adhering to the combination of tapping the potential of existing land and increasing incremental production capacity, to further improve land use efficiency. One is to improve the utilization rate of developed land. For example, many enterprises in Ningbo Petrochemical Zone that have been put into operation still have some undeveloped land, and we need to urge them to increase their investment efforts. The second is to implement the “cage swapping for birds” policy, establish a mechanism for enterprise exit in the park, phase out outdated processes, technologies, equipment, and products, and prepare contingency plans for enterprises with low industrial levels, large emissions, high environmental risks, and those that do not comply with the future development plan of petrochemical industry. Reasonable clearance and expansion of land space will be carried out. The third is to demand space from outside the city, scientifically delineate permanent basic farmland protection lines, and plan for the purchase and replacement of basic farmland indicators.
Energy consumption is also an extremely important development factor. According to the current prediction of energy consumption per billion yuan of output value in our city’s petrochemical industry, in order to achieve a total output value of trillions, an additional 27.168 million tons of standard coal are needed, far exceeding our city’s energy balance capacity.
Therefore, members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference suggest seeking to implement a separate list of regional energy consumption indicators for petrochemical parks from the national and Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission. To accurately understand the particularity of Ningbo as one of the seven major petrochemical bases in China, and to clarify the mutual relationship between the petrochemical industry and Ningbo’s energy “dual control”. As a petrochemical base under national planning and layout, our city should recognize the national status of enterprise projects that comply with local petrochemical base planning and are located in planned industrial parks. The energy consumption of projects in the region should be assessed separately for national (provincial) energy consumption or shared by provinces and cities with energy consumption indicators. At the same time, the measures for delaying and limiting the approval of petrochemical projects in the region should be lifted.
Regarding the issue of pollutant emissions, members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference realized after analyzing the data that from 2016 to 2019, the pollutant emissions data of the petrochemical industry in our city decreased year by year. However, after the new project is launched, there are still difficulties in supporting and ensuring the two indicators of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. It is necessary to strictly enforce environmental access, promote transformation and upgrading, strengthen the rectification of key areas, and focus on balancing energy consumption and pollutant indicators in clean production.
How to control pollutant emissions? Municipal?? The production process, equipment, energy consumption per unit product, material consumption, etc. of the project must reach the international advanced level in the same industry.
In promoting transformation and upgrading, we will further promote the elimination of outdated products, technologies, and devices, relocate or optimize the upgrading of existing small and medium-sized enterprises in the three major petrochemical parks, and strictly restrict industries with high water consumption and high nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants in wastewater.
In strengthening the rectification of key areas, we will further promote emission reduction measures such as ultra-low emission renovation of natural gas boilers, upgrading of industrial furnaces and kilns, upgrading of oil products, and control of construction dust, in order to reserve guarantee indicators for the development of the petrochemical industry.
Land, energy consumption, and pollution discharge are hard requirements for industrial development, while the trade system is a soft environment that affects the high-quality development of industries.
Building a trillion level green petrochemical industry cluster requires not only production, manufacturing, and processing, but also trade, logistics, and finance. During their research, members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference found that due to the current trade system, large-scale petrochemical crude oil processing, trade, ship refueling, and other registrations are all located in Beijing, Zhoushan, and other places, resulting in Ningbo Petrochemical’s small size and lack of voice and pricing power internationally. Zhenhai, Beilun, and Daxie all call for accelerating the development of petrochemical trade and energy finance to make Ningbo’s petrochemical industry bigger and stronger.
A member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference has proposed to continue promoting the original Sinopec related sales and logistics companies to increase trade volume, increase trade volume, and fulfill the commitment of planned sales volume; Properly manage new projects, implement trade volume and determine sales revenue for large projects that have been launched; Actively apply for a full industrial chain free trade zone for chemical and oil products, and focus on creating innovative platforms such as an international trade center for chemical products, an international distribution center for chemical products, and a full industrial chain for chemical (new chemical materials).
-Extending the Industrial Chain and Enhancing Industrial Value Added
Whether it is planning and layout, or the linkage of the three regions and element support, the ultimate focus is on how to further extend the petrochemical industry chain, enhance added value, and promote the realization of the trillion-level development goal of the green petrochemical industry.
In recent years, the green petrochemical industry in our city has steadily developed, but at the same time, problems such as imbalanced industrial chain, limited number of high value-added products, insufficient inter industry collaboration, and difficulty in maintaining competitive advantages have also become increasingly apparent. Members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have found that these bottlenecks are mainly manifested in four aspects:
The downstream of the industrial chain lacks the matching supply capacity for the application industry, and the scale and market of bulk chemical materials need to be improved; The downstream refinement rate of the industrial chain is not high, and high value-added chemical new materials need to be cultivated and broken through; The supporting synergy between the petrochemical industry and other industries is insufficient and needs to be improved and expanded; The pace of improving the quality and development of existing petrochemical enterprises is not fast enough, and the traditional competitive advantage of refining and chemical sources is gradually weakening.
For example, rubber and plastic parts produced from chemical raw materials account for over 50% of the total amount of automotive parts. However, it is understood that the local supply proportion of rubber and plastic raw materials required for automotive parts in our city is only about 30%. Our city urgently needs to promote the cross-border integration and coordinated development of green petrochemical industry and industries such as automobiles, home appliances, textiles and clothing through technological and institutional innovation, in order to improve the overall development efficiency of the ‘246’ trillion level industrial cluster A member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference who participated in the research said.
The research group suggests extending the petrochemical industry chain to enhance industrial added value through three channels: closed-loop expansion of enterprises, breakthrough of technological bottlenecks, and public platform promotion. The main focus is on “four extensions”: extending oil head refining to improve quality and efficiency, improving the flexible production process capacity of oil and chemicals, and enhancing competitiveness; Expanding the production scale and competitive advantage of bulk chemical materials such as synthetic rubber, synthetic resin, and synthetic fibers by expanding their scope and increasing their investment; Extending the cultivation of high-end chemical new materials, focusing on new synthetic materials, high-performance advanced materials, and super materials; Cross industry development extends towards collaborative support, building industrial collaboration platforms between the petrochemical industry and industries such as automobiles and home appliances.
At the specific work level, the members of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference suggest that the government, while vigorously promoting project construction, focus on further research on shortcomings, improve the industrial positioning and market functions of green petrochemical development, and focus on building a petrochemical industry chain system with prominent advantages, reasonable layout, and coordinated supporting facilities. To this end, they proposed four suggestions:
Improve the organizational model of technological innovation with the aim of breaking through technological barriers to industrial integration. There are two main tasks to be done. Firstly, we will fully leverage the advantages of high-level innovation platforms such as Ningbo Materials Institute, integrate scientific research capabilities and resources, and establish an efficient industrial collaborative innovation system and mechanism. Secondly, we will establish a technical cooperation alliance with Zhenhai Refining and Chemical, Geely Automobile, and Oaks Air Conditioning as the backbone, providing technical support for the coordinated development of rubber and plastic materials and components in the city. “said a member of the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
With the aim of promoting the cross-border extension of petrochemical and multi industry, we plan a professional park for the extension of the petrochemical industry chain. In accordance with the demand for high-end and refined development of the petrochemical industry, we plan a high-end, green, and independent intellectual property supported Ningbo Petrochemical Industry Chain Extension Professional Park, with a focus on planning and layout of functional zones such as the Automotive Special Materials Industrial Park, Fine Chemical Professional Park, Electronic Chemistry Comprehensive Professional Park, and High Score Sub materials Professional Park. Among them, the Automotive Special Materials Industrial Park should be guided by new automotive materials and promote the extension of the petrochemical industry to the field of chemical new materials.
For the purpose of data integration and information sharing, we will focus on the supply chain information service function and supply chain extension service function, create a petrochemical industry supply chain innovation service platform, and promote the overall cost reduction and efficiency increase of the supply chain.
Cultivate a high-end petrochemical production service industry with the goal of integrating the two industries and upgrading services. Strengthen the coordination with associations such as the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, strive to establish a petrochemical technology trading center in Ningbo, and introduce professional technology trading service institutions as the operating entities. After forming a certain scale, seek the support of relevant national ministries and commissions to hold the Global Petrochemical Industry Technology Trading Import Expo in Ningbo. “Suggested by the Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves, and set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea. As long as the whole city works together and bravely moves forward, a trillion level high-quality green petrochemical industry will definitely emerge, and a beautiful green petrochemical dream will be realized.
(Contributed by Ningbo Municipal Commission of Commerce)