In the rapidly booming field of rural sewage treatment in recent years, the industry has indeed achieved many results, but the problems that have been troubling the development of the industry still exist. To truly make the rural sewage treatment market not only "look beautiful, but also beautiful to do", we cannot avoid topics such as standards, technology, funding, and models.

The issue of rural sewage treatment began to receive widespread attention from the industry around 2015. During this period, the "Ten Measures for Water" were just released, which put forward higher requirements for rural environmental governance. Meanwhile, with the saturation of the urban sewage treatment market, vigorously developing the rural sewage treatment market has naturally become a hot topic of concern for enterprises.

In recent years, several provinces and cities across the country have gradually started the treatment of rural sewage. And some enterprises that took the lead in laying out the rural sewage treatment market also quickly and extensively entered during this period, such as Beijing Enterprises Water Group, Bishuiyuan, Sande and other water companies.

We also found that at the time when the agricultural water market attracted widespread attention in the industry, some cross-border enterprises entering the environmental industry also chose it as a breakthrough. For example, CRRC signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Jiangsu Changshu and the Ecological Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014. CRRC invested 1 billion yuan to establish a high-level production and research and development base for rural decentralized sewage treatment facilities in Changshu. By entering the rural water market, the army is expanding into the environmental industry.

In just a few years, many specialized environmental protection enterprises in specific fields have also rapidly emerged and made a name for themselves in the rural sewage treatment market. In the eyes of most industry insiders, corporate entities have clearly begun to shift towards rural areas, which will become the main battlefield for sewage treatment.

But reality is always relatively "bony". In the rapidly booming field of rural sewage treatment in recent years, the industry has indeed achieved many results, but the problems that have always plagued the development of the industry still exist. Therefore, phenomena such as rural sewage treatment facilities being built without operation and a large number of facilities being exposed to the sun have also frequently appeared in media reports.

To truly make the rural sewage treatment market not only "look beautiful, but also beautiful to do", we cannot avoid topics such as standards, technology, funding, and models.

How to reasonably determine emission standards?

The discharge standards for rural sewage treatment have always been one of the key topics of concern in the industry. What discharge standards should be adopted for rural sewage treatment? There is no unified consensus within the industry, and China has not yet formulated or issued a unified national standard.

Wang Hongchen, Vice Dean of the School of Environment at Renmin University of China and Director of the Low Carbon Water Environment Technology Research Center at Renmin University of China, pointed out at the 2018 Environmental Governance Forum that, based on the actual situation in China, there is no need to introduce a unified one size fits all rural sewage treatment and discharge standard nationwide. Standards need to be tailored to local conditions, so each region needs to develop local emission standards based on their actual situation.

According to statistics from China Water Network, several provinces and cities including Henan, Guangdong, Beijing, Tianjin, etc. have already issued corresponding rural sewage treatment and discharge standards this year (please click on the relevant link: [Pan Yi Pan] Summary of Rural Domestic Sewage Treatment and Discharge Standards in 9 Major Provinces and Cities). At present, areas without emission standards generally use the "Pollutant Discharge Standards for Urban Sewage Treatment Plants (GB18918-2002)" as a reference emission standard for their rural sewage treatment.

However, based on the currently released local emission standards, some provinces have set emission standards that are too strict and even far beyond technological reach, which is also a problem that must be addressed at present.

In response to these issues, government departments are also actively researching and exploring. Last year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development jointly issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Development of Local Rural Domestic Sewage Treatment and Discharge Standards" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), which clarifies the requirements for rural domestic sewage treatment and discharge at the national level, requiring all regions to accelerate the development of local rural domestic sewage treatment and discharge standards, and complete them by the end of June 2019. Those that have already been released should be revised according to the new requirements.

This not only means that in the short term, the national level will not introduce unified rural sewage treatment and discharge standards. At the same time, it also indicates that this year will be the time when a large number of local assessment standards will be introduced. How to reasonably determine emission standards has also become a key issue that needs to be addressed at this stage.

Not only is the choice of technology highly correlated with standards, but the uncertainty of standards also affects the progress of projects. Wang Hongchen believes that "assessment standards are a major challenge for rural sewage treatment. A standard may promote and facilitate the development of an industry, but a standard may also tie up an industry, so standards are crucial

This year, the 2019 Environmental Governance Forum will invite experts who have participated in the formulation of the "Notice" to focus on analyzing the direction of policies. If we plan to invite Xia Xunfeng, a researcher at the Rural Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, to discuss the new requirements of the Ministry of Environment for rural sewage treatment, we will also focus on introducing the specific requirements and directions for local development of rural sewage discharge standards at the national level.

How to choose the technical route?

The smaller the scale of sewage treatment, the more discussions there will be on technology selection. In recent years when the rural sewage treatment market has received much attention, the debate on the choice of technical route has never stopped. Compared with urban sewage treatment, rural sewage treatment relies more on technology and requires more technology. But the mainstream technology for rural sewage treatment, many people cannot say, Wang Hongchen once said, is because rural sewage treatment has just begun.

Starting from the actual situation in our country, what kind of technology is the mainstream technology for rural sewage treatment is also a perennial topic. But there is still no standard answer.

Wang Hongchen also pointed out at last year's Environmental Governance Forum that many provinces and cities require "one village, one policy" for rural sewage treatment, but China has more than 2 million natural villages and 600000 administrative villages, and it is impossible to have two or three million treatment technologies. Therefore, there must be mainstream technology. If more than 60% of the natural villages adopt mainstream technology, it is considered mainstream technology.

Why is there a situation where a large number of facilities are built but not used? For rural sewage treatment, it is not only a matter of funding and supervision, but also a technical issue that is even more critical.

That's why the topic of rural sewage treatment technology was one of the key topics discussed at previous environmental governance forums. Many companies have also brought about technological exploration thinking in response to practice. Wang Jun'an, Assistant to the President of Sande Co., Ltd. and General Manager of the Village Environment Group, once mentioned in an exchange that in rural sewage treatment, it can be divided into three categories according to technology: biofilm method, activated sludge method, and natural ecological method. The suitable technical direction for rural areas should be the combination of these three methods. But it may focus more on biofilm process, and then be combined with activated sludge process and natural ecological process according to different uses and emission standards.

Professor Wang Hongchen also concluded based on years of research and practice that the research, development, and process selection of rural sewage treatment technology in China should follow the principle of putting operation at the center, focusing on being able to operate in rural areas, and focusing on being able to operate normally every day in rural areas. Only those that can operate simply every day are the mainstream technologies for rural sewage treatment.

The technical topic is also the highlight of this year's environmental governance forum. At that time, Liu Junxin, the director of the Water Pollution Control Laboratory of the Ecological Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the director of the Northern Research Center for Rural Sewage Treatment Technology of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development, will be invited to make a detailed analysis of the technical specifications for rural sewage treatment. He also hopes that through discussion and exchange, enterprises can make technological choices to truly make rural sewage treatment effective and quality.

How to solve the funding problem?

When it comes to the problems in environmental governance, the most frequently mentioned issue is the funding problem, which is particularly prominent for rural environmental governance.

In fact, rural environmental protection has been launched for over a decade and has been strongly supported and promoted at the national level. From 2008 to 2017, a total investment of over 40 billion yuan was made, and local governments invested a large amount of funds to support about 138000 administrative villages in carrying out environmental remediation work, playing a very important role in promoting rural environmental protection. The construction of rural environmental governance facilities is also gradually improving.

However, from the perspective of rural sewage treatment, issues such as standards and technology selection have also posed certain obstacles to the advancement of rural sewage treatment. Lu Yuantang, Director of the Environmental PPP Center at the Environmental Planning Institute of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, has pointed out that due to the lack of unified discharge standards for rural sewage treatment, many places are basically following the requirements of urban sewage treatment, requiring it to reach Class A or even Class IV on the surface, resulting in very high costs. Relying solely on government investment to operate often results in unsustainable fiscal expenditures.

In addition, the imperfect market mechanism for rural environmental governance in China is also one of the reasons for financial pressure. The charging mechanism for rural domestic sewage and garbage treatment has not been established, and most areas have not yet carried out charging work; Rural environmental governance projects have high costs, high risks, and low enthusiasm for social capital participation. Lu Yuantang believes that China urgently needs to explore the establishment of a rural environmental governance payment system and cost sharing mechanism. At the same time, he also mentioned that industrial integration is an important measure to effectively expand the rural environmental governance market.

What kind of mode is more suitable?

The barriers of policies, technology, funding and other factors continue to exist, and there is still a long way to go for rural sewage treatment. Finding a suitable business model is also one of the breakthroughs that many environmental protection enterprises are looking for at present.

How to do rural sewage treatment? "The first thing to do is to jump out of the category of sewage treatment". Qian Yizeng, professor of the Department of Environmental Engineering of Tsinghua University and academician of the CAE Member, pointed out that this meant that sewage treatment should not be considered alone, but should be combined with livestock manure treatment, straw utilization, etc., to convert waste into energy, and solve the problems of energy and fertilizer sources in rural areas while solving pollution problems.

For the large-scale and wide-ranging rural domestic sewage treatment, it should not rely on technology itself, but on commercial models; it should not rely solely on marketization, but should be led by the government to improve the effectiveness of decentralized pollution control. Coordinating rural environmental governance as a whole and combining domestic sewage treatment technology with rural life, agricultural production, and ecological development is a higher demand for rural environmental governance, "said Wang Kaijun, a professor at Tsinghua University. This is a powerful endorsement of the environmental protection+new agriculture and environmental protection+new rural model.

At present, many enterprises are exploring this path. For example, Sound has integrated rural sewage, urban and rural water integration, Internet plus services, green towns, etc. in its practical projects to finally implement rural ecological civilization; Beijing Jiaye Jiajing combines rural ponds and sewage treatment through technological exploration, achieving * treatment with less funding than integrated equipment; In the design and construction of the Yixing urban-rural ecological complex project, Zhongchi Water Management approaches from the perspective of a sewage treatment concept plant, extracting a large amount of resources from sewage for use in multiple links such as agriculture, farmland, fish ponds, and central wetlands. Each link cooperates with each other and serves as a resource. Through a symbiotic model, environmental protection has entered the new agriculture and become a rural ecological complex.

There is ample room for exploration in the mode of rural environmental governance. Lu Yuantang also pointed out at the environmental governance forum last year that in rural environmental governance, large-scale operation can be achieved through some regional bundling, project bundling, environmental Internet plus+, PPP+third-party governance and other ways to reduce the cost of unit pollution governance, and ultimately reduce the pressure on financial payment. Only through this approach can rural environmental governance work achieve sustainable development.

On the basis of exploring standards and technologies, the 2019 Environmental Governance Forum will also invite more relevant experts and business representatives to analyze specific successful cases and better exchange ideas on the mode of rural sewage treatment. At the same time, regarding the new problems and solutions that may be faced in the future stage of rural domestic sewage treatment, the forum also plans to invite Professor Wang Hongchen to give specific presentations, focusing on the future direction of rural sewage treatment. Please stay tuned.