The whole environmental protection industry is entering a vicious circle?!
On the occasion of the 105th anniversary of Tsinghua University, the "Tsinghua MBA alumni forum of enlightenment school 'new kinetic energy, new industry and new model' jointly sponsored by the MBA education center of Tsinghua School of economics and management, Tsinghua Global Industry Research Institute, Tsinghua School of economics and Management MBA Alumni Association and doctoral Alumni association was held in the school of economics and management of Tsinghua University on the afternoon of April 24.
Wen Yibo, a leading figure in China's environmental protection industry and chairman and President of sound group, was invited to attend the forum and make an opening speech as an alumni guest. In view of the current investment boom and development trend of the environmental protection industry, Wen Yibo frankly said: the environmental protection industry is both a blue ocean and a red ocean. If there is a breakthrough in new technology and new business model, it is a blue ocean, and vice versa.
The following is the transcript of the speech:
Dear teachers, distinguished guests and students, good morning!
I'm glad to share with you some information about the environmental protection industry. Environmental protection has been very hot in recent years. Especially last year, haze attracted everyone's attention during the "two sessions". In recent years, the continuous outbreak of problems such as air, water and soil pollution has also given birth to the continuous growth of the environmental protection industry. Therefore, many people think that the environmental protection industry is a particularly good sunrise industry and blue ocean industry. Indeed, in recent years, our country has continuously launched action plans for relevant sectors, including ten water, ten gas and ten soil, and each sector often has an industrial scale of several trillion. Moreover, from a worldwide perspective, the environmental protection industry is also developing continuously and at a high speed. Even in the case of the global economic downturn, the development speed of the industry remains at a relatively high growth rate.
In this way, there is indeed a lot of space in this field. Therefore, many domestic enterprises have entered this industry. At present, 30% - 40% of central enterprises may have entered this industry to varying degrees, including construction, water conservancy, cement, real estate, gardens and so on. They have begun to intervene in the environmental protection market. Everyone believes that there are many business opportunities in this field.
In fact, most of these enterprises come in capital intensive or administrative resource-based enterprises. Many people think that this industry has no technical content. As long as there are good capital conditions and administrative relations, they will have the opportunity to make money. Later, it was found that this field has actually become a red sea, and the whole industry is gradually entering a vicious circle.
For example:
Let's start with waste incineration for power generation. At present, cities above prefecture level cities in China basically have a waste incineration power plant in every city, and almost every county is building a staggering number of waste incineration plants. In 2002, the price of waste incineration power generation in our country was about 200-250 yuan / ton. In recent years, because too many enterprises have come in, the price of waste incineration power generation has been reduced from 200 yuan to 100 yuan, and then to 70 yuan, 60 yuan, 50 yuan, 38 yuan, 28 yuan and 18 yuan. Recently, the price has been reduced to 10 yuan. At present, the price of a ton of garbage disposal in Europe is about 100 euros, that in the United States is about 100 dollars, and that in our country is 10 yuan!
Is it really technological progress? Definitely not. The garbage in our country is actually more difficult to deal with than all domestic garbage in foreign countries, because the living habits and consumption level of our country lead to the high moisture content and low calorific value of domestic garbage. For example, the calorific value of garbage in Europe and America is basically 1500-2000 kcal, and many of our countries are below 1000 kcal. This value is not enough to generate electricity.
After the price is reduced to 10 yuan, we can only save investment as much as possible, including facility construction and operation costs. However, this results in environmental pollution. Our waste incineration power generation has always been opposed by the people, which is the reason. Because of the vicious competition of low price, there are hidden dangers in the stability and safety of facilities. In addition, there is really no profit. Most of them are crying out at a loss. Some people bet that prices will be increased in the future, but it is almost impossible to increase prices from the trend in recent years. Therefore, in fact, the situation of waste incineration power generation industry has been very bad.
Besides sewage treatment. At present, the quotation for sewage treatment has been reduced from 5 yuan per ton of water to 2 yuan and 1 yuan, and the lowest has been reduced to 39 cents. This price is not even enough for daily operation expenses, let alone depreciation, maintenance and overhaul. Some enterprises believe that they come in as a strategy and occupy the pit, and they have to come in to lose money. In fact, they do not have the opportunity to make money, but some enterprises are still doing so. As a result, many governments have expected that the price of sewage treatment should be so low. The consequence of this is that enterprises like us, which have developed for more than 20 years, are confused. Do you want to participate or bid? The market rules have been disrupted, which is a kind of harm to the whole industry.
The same is seawater desalination. In the world, the average price of seawater desalination is more than US $1, including investment, construction and operation, but in our country, it has been reduced to less than 4 yuan last year. What's the concept? Basically only enough for operating costs. The investment in seawater desalination is very high. How can the industry without investment income continue and develop?
This is basically the case in other areas. At present, there are about 30000 enterprises in this industry, with more than 3 million employees, and the annual output value is large. Moreover, the cooperation and M & A among enterprises have been strengthened, including overseas. Last year, China's environmental protection enterprises spent more than 20 billion on overseas M & A. many European enterprises basically only look for Chinese people to sell assets, and only Chinese people can afford the price.
However, the current situation in Europe is that the amount of garbage is decreasing, so much PE is spent, but the profit can not be increased. What do you buy it? Buy its technology, buy its resources? The calorific value of garbage in Europe is very high, and the calorific value of domestic garbage is very low. It is certainly not possible to move the same technology directly. What on earth did you buy with so much money? hear nothing of.
In short, this industry gives people the feeling that there are opportunities everywhere and rich Chinese everywhere, but on the contrary, it is really difficult to make money. We have seen many overseas projects with tus scientific service this year. I'm thinking, why are Europeans selling projects? Because it really has no growth and keeps going downhill. I don't think it's suitable to buy large or small projects overseas. It's better to buy yourself than others. Therefore, my conclusion is that if we do it in the traditional way, the industry is already a red sea. The big will die, the small will die, and finally it will be a mess.
But is there no chance in this industry? Neither. Because the scale of the industry is, there will be opportunities. We conclude that the industry needs to do three different angles to generate new opportunities, the first core technology, second Internet plus, and third ecological chain.
At present, there are many problems and technical bottlenecks in the environmental protection industry. The scientific research achievements of some colleges and universities seem to be of high level, but they are difficult to transform. Production and application still have a long way to go. For example, a large number of urban sewage treatment plants in northern China will exceed the ammonia nitrogen index in winter. What's the reason? It's just that the technology hasn't been solved. On the contrary, the state has done a lot of public relations topics in recent years, including the water projects in the Eleventh Five Year Plan and the twelfth five year plan, but there is no such topic. Why? Many projects have reached the world leading level for a long time, but the project can not stand up, resulting in many main indicators of industrial wastewater reaching the standard, but some key indicators are not up to the standard, so there are still many key technologies that can be broken through in this field.
Many people don't like waste incineration for power generation. On the one hand, a large number of garbage besieged the city must be treated. On the other hand, more and more residents oppose the construction of waste incineration plants. Is there a way to solve this contradiction? In fact, this itself is a subject that can be broken through.
And garbage sorting. We shouted for decades, spent a lot of money and thought to do this work, but the final result was very poor. Should garbage be classified and how? Around this, we will talk about a core technology, the case of "Internet plus" and the ecological chain.
We made breakthroughs in core technologies from two places.
The first is garbage classification. We think that if there is a technical solution that can be classified, the subsequent treatment process will be relatively simple, so we have done the automatic extrusion classification of waste. Residents put the mixed waste together to the factory and squeeze it into organic wet waste and high calorific value hot waste through the equipment. This path is particularly simple from the source to transportation, treatment and terminal, The cost is greatly reduced and the whole process is more environmentally friendly. Some breakthroughs have been made in this technology. After extrusion, we do secondary gasification, burn it all with plasma, and finally turn it into slag and gas, which can be directly burned for power generation like natural gas. This path will be a new business opportunity for us.
We have also made many new attempts in environmental sanitation. In the past, we thought that sanitation was sweeping the streets. We thought this model was unsustainable. We felt that we must improve its added value in order to do sanitation, so we called the so-called Internet sanitation. We have to clean every day, and the streets and alleys need to be done. Taking this as the entrance, we integrate sanitation, logistics and waste recycling. Originally, sanitation is a network and waste recycling is a network. Now we have two networks in parallel. Integrating renewable resources through sanitation and combining logistics through daily sanitation operations, we have made such a new business format covering sanitation, renewable resources and logistics, including advertising. In the past, sanitation cleaning was mainly manual. Now we have achieved the mode of machinery, which has greatly improved people's quality. At the same time, new business opportunities have been generated in some ways. We are not competing with traditional sanitation enterprises, nor with the original renewable resources and logistics industries, because we are a new business model. After May Day this year, our new Internet sanitation platform will become an open platform after it is launched. All sanitation companies can use our platform for free. In the future, we will know how many people live in which community, their living level and living standard, and their structure through the level of waste discharged and renewable resources, In this way, new business opportunities are generated.
Therefore, if the environmental protection industry continues in the traditional way, it is unsustainable, but the industry also has many new business opportunities, especially breakthroughs in details. It can be said that the environmental protection industry is both a blue ocean and a red ocean. If there are breakthroughs in new technologies and new business models, it is a blue ocean, and vice versa.
Thank you!