Chapter 1155: The Ministry of Energy
Ministries and commissions, all parts related to energy utilization, energy planning and energy production are all assigned to this level of ministry. Even the State Environmental Protection Administration, which has great authority and has become increasingly important after joining the WTO, has been included.
The reason for doing so is also based on the idea of a large energy industry, and at the same time to meet the needs of high-level government personnel reduction.
The development of the domestic environmental protection industry is relatively slow. Since the 1980s, various places have been groping in the river in promoting environmental protection market-oriented reforms.
Taking water construction project investment promotion as a representative, in the late 1980s, some cities began water investment reforms. City governments obtained intergovernmental loans or loans from international financial organizations through direct or indirect guarantees.
In this round of investment, more than 100 projects in major cities were involved, but the investment did not involve property rights.
After the central government prohibited city governments from participating in direct financing such as guarantees, the second phase of investment exploration began in the mid-1990s. Foreign capital began to invest in urban water plant projects in the form of cooperative operation and guaranteed fixed returns (basically excluding urban pipe networks), which also avoided the issue of clarifying property rights relations and only clarified investment returns.
In the late 1990s, the third stage of reform exploration represented by a large number of T methods began. T liberalized limited property rights for a certain period of time for a single new project (mainly water plant projects), realized effective financing of the project, but avoided the property rights disposal of the original assets of the urban water industry.
With the full development of the reform of urban water enterprises, the separation of government public management functions and asset investor functions, especially after the 18th CPC National Congress, the property rights reform of water enterprises really kicked off. The partial equity transfer of urban water enterprises in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Sanya and other cities marked that the marketization of the water industry has entered the stage of property rights system reform.
At the end of 2001, the State Planning Commission issued a notice on the issuance of several opinions on promoting and guiding private investment, pointing out that it is necessary to gradually relax the investment field. Except for special provisions of the state, all areas where foreign investment is encouraged and allowed to enter are encouraged and allowed to enter private investment; encourage and guide private investment to participate in the construction of commercial infrastructure and public welfare projects in the form of sole proprietorship, cooperation, joint venture, equity participation, and franchise.
The issuance of this "Notice" marks the recognition of the franchise model.
At the end of last year, the Ministry of Construction issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Marketization of Municipal Utilities", requiring the use of institutional innovation and mechanism innovation as the driving force, and ensuring the public interest to promote the development of the municipal utilities industry as the purpose, to accelerate the marketization of the municipal utilities industry. Encourage social funds and foreign capital to participate in the construction of municipal utilities in various forms such as sole proprietorship, joint ventures, and cooperation, and form a diversified investment structure.
Overall,
Fan Heng and Fan Wubing, father and son, still learned from some advanced foreign experience and raised some powers under the jurisdiction of the State Environmental Protection Administration to the status of national energy, especially for special energy such as water resources, which was mentioned to a fairly high position, and the topic of environmental protection itself is inseparable from the effective use of energy, energy conservation and emission reduction.
As long as a new large energy department is established, these problems can be solved in a coordinated manner, without the need to continue to argue and not manage things like now.
"But if this is the case, wouldn't the agency that was upgraded to the State Environmental Protection Administration in 1998 face dissolution once and for all? Without the sign of the State Environmental Protection Administration, how will the people view it?" Some people also expressed different opinions.
The current Environmental Protection Administration was upgraded to a general administration after the flood relief work in 1998. The decision was probably made out of consideration of the importance of environmental protection work.
Fan Heng immediately responded to this, "Many domestic works have obvious shortcomings of treating the symptoms but not the root cause. It does not mean that just putting up a sign of the Environmental Protection Administration and upgrading the specifications to the General Administration will enable domestic environmental protection work to be done well. In fact, the nominal change is useless. The change from the Environmental Protection Bureau to the Environmental Protection Administration has not brought much benefit to the country. The input and return are seriously disproportionate. In my personal opinion, it is better to do less of such things. The key is to solve the problem in essence. Constructing a large Ministry of Energy and integrating the power of the Environmental Protection Administration into it will make energy utilization, management, planning and output integrated, which is more conducive to the healthy development of the entire society."
This made some people feel very uncomfortable, but they could not find any faults. Once someone talked about this matter, it was just the same. It was just like the propaganda slogan "People's xx for the people, run xx for the people" appeared in a period of time. Such slogans were painted all over the streets, but when they were not serving the people, they were still the same, and they were still stumbling like masters.
It is clear from this that if we want to do a good job in environmental protection, it is not as simple as upgrading the Environmental Protection Bureau to the State Environmental Protection Administration. The improvement of administrative level has no practical influence on the work.
And there is another good thing. In addition to being criticized, the emergence of the State Environmental Protection Administration is really meaningless to the environmental protection cause.
In the past six years, the domestic environmental law enforcement supervision and pollution control efforts have been continuously strengthened, environmental protection investment has increased significantly, and public environmental awareness has increased significantly.
However, the government has been under considerable pressure in environmental protection, and companies have evaded their responsibilities in order to reduce the burden, which has also affected the normal development of environmental protection. It would be very dangerous if we cannot establish a modern environmental management model as soon as possible and promote the healthy development of China's environmental protection industry.
In fact, as early as the 1980s, China proposed that environmental protection should take a market-oriented approach. However, what is the environmental protection model that adapts to the market economy? The country has never understood this.
The occurrence of environmental problems has its economic roots, which inevitably determines the possibility of economic activities being involved in environmental protection. Through innovative economic systems, such as price and property rights systems, we will encourage those who pollute and destroy environmental resources to choose production and management methods that are beneficial to the environment based on their own economic interests. We will rely on technological progress and clean production technology to improve economic production efficiency and change traditional economic growth. model to reduce the pressure of human economic activities on resources and the environment.
However, the existing environmental protection operation mode unilaterally emphasizes government behavior, only focuses on input and not output, and ignores the basic laws of economic activities. This makes the environmental protection industry lack economic benefits, deepens the opposition between environmental protection and economic development, and hinders environmental protection. career development.
To solve environmental problems, it is necessary to establish various environmental management systems, including government policies, that are compatible with the market economy, abandon the past practice of unilaterally relying on direct government orders to control management, use economic means, and establish diversified management through market policy management. The modernized investment system uses market-based means to allocate the environmental investment share of each polluter.
It is necessary for the state to be responsible for the construction of some highly technical environmental infrastructure, comprehensive cross-regional pollution control, and environmental management and supervision, provide cutting-edge technologies for clean production of enterprises, and adopt designated environmental policies, laws and regulations, management systems and environmental plans. etc. to restrict behaviors that pollute the environment and destroy ecology, and provide certain policy preferences in treating enterprises' environmental investments, such as implementing preferential policies on loan interest rates for environmental investment projects, etc., to guide and encourage enterprises and society to jointly protect the environment.
"Environmental protection should be transformed from past government behavior into a market behavior and corporate behavior driven by an economic interest mechanism. The adoption of an economic system can enable companies to choose the least-cost pollution control technology, have the flexibility to pay, and encourage companies to reduce costs that exceed standards. Require more pollution. Establish an effective cost selection mechanism to prevent and control environmental pollution, directly reduce the pollution generated, reduce costs, establish a good corporate image, and achieve a win-win effect for the environment and the economy," said Fan Heng. The mechanism has achieved good results in Japan. Our country should also implement a total discharge charge system to encourage enterprises to take pollution prevention and control measures and choose a cleaner production path by charging more than the treatment cost. In addition, the system of corporate environmental management must be strengthened. The construction and implementation efforts enable enterprises to form self-disciplined environmental management behaviors in the prevention and control of industrial pollution. The development of environmental protection industries encourages enterprises to choose cleaner production methods, which can not only control pollution from the perspective of enterprises, but also guide individual environmental protection behaviors from the perspective of consumption, such as Choose green packaging, reduce waste, etc.”
In any case, in order to achieve effective supervision and governance, only by integrating environmental protection with the Ministry of Energy can it be possible to reduce the waste of resources and unify it into an overall scope to solve the problem from the root. As for this approach, if you meet the standards of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, it will cut you off directly from the source. Without environmental protection, there will be no energy. The power of supervision is in one hand, and it has the ability to take life and death from enterprises.
"Looking at the deterioration of the environment in the past two decades, we should wake up. We should not just consider personal interests and consider how much trouble it will cause if we reduce a few ministerial and deputy ministerial levels, but we should look at the country. What exactly is needed?" Fan Heng pointedly pointed out, "If this situation does not change immediately, the backlash of nature will be very severe. In twenty years, we will have no energy available, and the living space will no longer be suitable for human habitation. ! The growth of GDP is just an illusion. You can control it at will by playing with capital operation techniques, but the deterioration of energy and environment is real. None of us want to have to live abroad after retirement, right? Failure to do so is an outright crime!”
After the meeting ended, some people whispered, "Vice Prime Minister Fan's temper is getting louder and louder, and his words are sharp and point to the root of the problem, even worse than Boss Zhu."
"What they said is indeed the truth, but I don't have the guts to bring it up directly." Someone else said.