As per a new five-year plan, China will focus on the raw materials industry, to make green and digital upgrades to balance supply and demand.
These efforts are in a bid to support China’s carbon neutrality goals. The plan was issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and two government agencies. It set several targets and laid out the key tasks for the raw materials sector to achieve higher quality, better profitability and distribution, with low carbon emissions during the 14th Five-Year Plan period through 2025. The production capacity of major bulk raw material goods such as crude steel and cement should drop or not increase further, according to the plan. The government also ordered the energy consumption per tonne of steel to be reduced by 2 per cent by 2025, while usage per unit of cement should be cut by 3.7 per cent, and electrolytic aluminium is required to use 5 per cent less energy for every unit produced by 2025.