In 2023, the budget for water pollution prevention, air pollution prevention, soil pollution prevention, urban pipe network and sewage treatment subsidies, rural environmental remediation and other funds related to ecological environment reached 247.582 billion yuan.

Among them, the budget for water pollution prevention and control is 17 billion yuan, and the budget for the new pilot project of rural black and odorous water treatment is 1.125 billion yuan. On the first working day of 2023, 11 enterprises won four major projects, with a total winning amount of more than 6.4 billion yuan, ushering in a wave of “good start”.

At the same time, as the third year of the “Fourteenth Five-Year Plan”, the construction of water conservancy infrastructure and ecological environmental protection projects will also be strengthened in 2023.

In addition to major project construction, the situation of environmental protection enterprises is expected to improve in terms of local government arrears this year. In order to effectively expand domestic demand, the Central Economic Work Conference specifically proposed that local governments and large enterprises should never default on the payments due to small and medium-sized enterprises. As the “hardest hit area” of local government arrears, the environmental protection industry will undoubtedly be one of the beneficiaries of this policy.

At present, the division of labor in the environmental protection industry is more specialized and refined. Large-scale enterprises with strong comprehensive business capabilities and abundant funds have developed into platform enterprises, undertaking a large number of environmental infrastructure construction projects such as comprehensive treatment of ecological environment, sewage and garbage. The “construction era” is more suitable for enterprises that focus on assets and engineering, because all fields need basic construction, and the market values the ability of enterprises in terms of capital, scale and engineering construction, which is obviously the dish of state-owned enterprises. The private small and medium-sized enterprises are more intensive in the subdivided fields, taking the development path of “specialization and innovation”, and providing supporting services such as technology, equipment, construction, materials, operation and maintenance for large enterprises and projects.

At the same time, under the new situation of the “14th Five-Year Plan”, the environmental protection industry is in the process of transformation from the engineering era to the operation era. The theme of environmental protection will change from focusing on construction to focusing on operation and effect, and the service thinking and customer thinking of environmental enterprises will become more and more intensive. This is suitable for asset-light and technical private enterprises. The market mainly focuses on the ability of enterprises in technical services. For private enterprises, it has ushered in an exclusive bonus period. The environmental protection industry has entered the era of “effect” from the era of “appearance”.

Source: Environmental Protection Circle