Dynamic simulation of integrated cleaner production strategies towards high quality development in a heavily air-polluted city in China

Abstract

Air-polluted cities, mostly dominated by heavy industries, are facing the dilemma of economic growth and environment deterioration. Tangshan is the largest iron and steel manufacturing city in China, and its air quality rankings belong to the worst 10 among 168 monitored cities of China in a decade. It is extremely important to adopt cleaner production strategies to facilitate high quality development. This study originally created an integrated plan (DOMCLP) to propose feasible pathways to underpin policy making by local authorities and managers from multiple perspectives. These include “Top-Down” measures—financial subsides and environmental efficiency improvement from a macro vision and industrial restructuring from a mezzo vision—and a “Bottom-Up” strategy of optimal technology selection from a micro vision. The DOMCLP simulated the environmental and economic impacts of different cleaner production strategy mixes from 2020 to 2030. Under the cleaner production scenario, which integrates all three measures, the targeted annual economic growth rate can reach 6.56% over the study period without deterioration of the air environment, and air pollutant emissions can be reduced by more than 74%. Meanwhile, the production of the iron and steel industry can achieve a 43% capacity growth, in which the intensity of SO2 and NOX can be reduced by 97 and 87%, respectively. Furthermore, upgrading the optimal air pollutant control technology is proven to be more effective than other incentive measures and calls for systematic optimization and technology choice shift from end treatment to source and process treatment in the long run. This study proves that the integrated cleaner production strategies can realize a strong decoupling effect on the scale of −5.89 to −0.58 to accomplish balanced economic development and environmental improvement in heavily air-polluted cities, which is significant as other industrial cities begin to move toward a high quality development.