Source: People’s Daily Online – People’s Daily Overseas Edition
In recent years, Rongjiang New District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province has made full use of the abundant Wind resources, develop environmentally friendly wind power industry, reduce carbon emissions by producing clean energy, improve the ecological environment, and achieve a win-win situation in ecological and economic benefits. The picture shows the Qingtian Wind Farm in Tandong Town, Rongjiang New District. One after another wind turbines stand among the rolling hills. Photo by Zhu Haipeng (Picture of the People)
Over the years, the environmental protection industry has followed the trend of green development and has continued to grow in many fields such as pollution control, ecological protection and restoration, and resource recycling, effectively supporting high-quality economic development. and ecological high-level protection, and become a sunrise industry that promotes green, low-carbon and circular development.
Entering the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, China is speeding up the transformation of the development mode, vigorously developing the green economy, and promoting the realization of the “dual carbon” goal, which provides new development opportunities for the environmental protection industry; The transition from end-to-end governance to whole-process control puts forward new requirements for the coverage and supply capacity of the environmental protection industry. Therefore, taking innovation as the driving force for development and continuously improving innovation capability is an inevitable choice for the further development of the environmental protection industry.
Technological innovation is the core driving force leading the development of the environmental protection industry. In the past ten years, in the field of environmental protection, China’s invention patent applications accounted for more than half of the total global invention patents; in the field of environmental technology, China’s number of high-value patents ranked second in the world. This fully shows that we have the ability to make continuous progress in environmental protection technology innovation. As the main body of innovation, enterprises should strengthen their confidence, increase investment in research and development of environmental protection technology innovation, and seek breakthroughs in key core technologies urgently needed by the market.
Specifically, small and medium-sized enterprises should become better and stronger on the subdivision track and become “little giants” in the professional field; leading enterprises should take advantage of resource integration and cluster with technological innovation achievements for the Regional environmental governance provides comprehensive solutions. The innovative synergy formed by the two will effectively promote the environmental protection industry to become bigger and stronger, and then integrate with related industries such as energy and materials to better serve the needs of China’s high-quality development.
The development of any industry must be based on continuous and stable income. Different from other industries, the environmental protection industry takes a good ecological environment as the “production object” and has a strong public interest. How to convert environmental benefits into economic benefits and expand the source of funds for ecological environment governance has become a key issue affecting the sustainable development of the environmental protection industry.
In this regard, we must make bold innovations in business models, realize the transformation of ecological product value, and open up the return on investment mechanism. In recent years, Shandong, Anhui, Zhejiang and other places have actively explored new paths for the development of environmental protection industries such as the EOD model, third-party governance of environmental pollution, and regional environmental trusteeship operation and maintenance, and have achieved certain results. These pilot experiences will help the environmental protection industry to enhance its “self-hematopoietic” function, reduce its dependence on purely government-paid ecological environment governance projects, and turn the “new road” into a “big road”.
In order to continuously activate the innovation capability of the environmental protection industry, it is also necessary to cultivate the soil to support innovation and create a good innovation environment for the environmental protection industry. The characteristics of technology-intensive, large investment and long return period make the environmental protection industry face practical problems such as difficult and expensive financing. Developing green finance and comprehensively improving the financing environment of the environmental protection industry can directly address the development pain points of the environmental protection industry’s tight cash flow and provide a source of living water for industrial innovation. The good news is that financial instruments such as the National Green Development Fund have already entered the market. In a market-oriented way, the advantages of the central government’s financial investment have been brought into full play, and social capital has been attracted to help the environmental protection industry cultivate new growth points.
Environmental protection industry is promising, innovation and development will win the future. Let us make more innovation attempts, and introduce more good strategies to cultivate an innovative environment, so that the innovation vitality of the environmental protection industry can fully flow, and better support the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful China.