Shaanxi Explored a New Way for Intensive and Economic Resource Use

In the “13th Five-Year Plan”, our province proposed to form a lifestyle and social fashion of resources conservation and environmental optimization, improve the recovery ratio, recovery rate and comprehensive utilization of mineral resources, comprehensively control energy consumption intensity and total energy consumptions, strictly control the total amount of water and also introduce a series of policies and measures for economized and intensive resources utilization and explore a new way for economized and intensive energy utilization.

In Hancheng Economic and Technological Development Zone covering 110 square kilometers, a number of advanced equipments manufacturing industry, new energy industry, new material industry and agricultural and side products deep-processing industry and other industries are gathered. With introduction of enterprises, the efficient functions of all function areas have been significantly improved, the industrial features have been further prominent and the product scale has become larger so as to form a strong industrial agglomeration cycle chain.

It is a criterion for our province with respect to the intensive land use, that is, to let each inch of land to play its due value. For the land use plan of this year, our province will implement the plan in the order of “stock lands firstly, then transferred lands and finally increased lands”, give priority to increase supports to people’s livelihood projects, such as education, pension, health care, culture, sports, modern service and public facilities, etc.; focus on supporting transport, water conservancy, energy and other infrastructure and military facilities construction; separately arrange for affordable housing projects, agricultural and rural development, house-building of farmers, major counties for poverty alleviation and development and special land use plan for the cities with significant achievements in the implementation of national policies. Since the works for increasing and decreasing pilot assistance, the land use indexes of total 306,000 mu. have been turned over accumulatively, which achieved direct economic benefits of nearly 20 billion Yuan. It was informed that total 266,000 mu rural collective construction land has been withdrawn, where the construction land index of 0.25 million mu has been added and provided a solid support for many major construction projects, such as major demonstration towns and well-known cultural and tourism towns and resettlement of migrants from the southern Shaanxi.

With regard to the use of water resources, the 13th Five-Year Plan for Water-saving Society Construction of Shaanxi Province was issued at the beginning of this year, which proposed that the province’s total water use should be controlled within 11.292 billion cubic meters by 2020 and unconventional water use would be significantly improved. Shaanxi Province Water Conservation Implementation Program issued by 9 departments including Shaanxi Provincial Department of Water Resources, Shaanxi Provincial Commission of Development and Reform and other departments, provided specific requirements for ten works, such as the implementation of agricultural water production, industrial water efficiency, urban water conservation for losses reduction, promotion of water-saving products, water-saving market and industrial cultivation, water-saving of public institutions, unified distribution of unconventional water supply, improvement of water-saving supervision, establishment of the water-saving model and national water-saving propaganda actions. And now the introduction of Hanjiang River into Wei River under construction will create a large water network under comprehensive arrangement of the water resources in the whole territory of Shaanxi Province, achieve a space balance and scientific use of water resources to resolve the problem of water shortage in northern Shaanxi and Guanzhong and play an important role in guarantee the economical and social development and aquatic ecosystem construction of the whole province.

From 2016 to 2020, Shaanxi has been fully implementing mineral resources development, correction of extensive development, guarantee of safety, treatment of hidden dangers, protection of ecology and pollution control so as to improve the overall economic, social and ecological benefits from mineral resources development. For more than one year after implementation of the above actions, the province's open-stone quarry enterprises have been reduced from 1652 to 931 with overall reduction of 41%. In particular, the control objective that the mines should be reduced by half in northern slope of Qinling Mountains and Dry Belt of Northern Weihe River has been achieved one year in advance: 61 coal mines have been closed and the production capacities of 28.74 million tons have been reduced; total 522.7 ha have been restored for mines environments with total investments of 200 million Yuan. By gradually getting rid of backward exploration, mining and selection and processing utilization, the province will focus on the supply of resources from the expansion of the scale of supply to optimization of structures and enlarging scales and from coarse utilization to fine control. It is planned that by 2020, the total amount of mines in our province will be reduced by 35%, large and medium-scale mines increased up to 20%, the intensive utilization level significantly improved, the restoration and control of ecological environment of mines will reach up to 80% while the utilization of tailings and waste residue will reach up over 60%.