It is difficult to pay for soil remediation and farmland pollution control is more considerable.

"High pollution exceeding standard rate", "trillions scale market", "complex systems engineering" and "emerging industries in the early stage of development". With these labels, China's soil pollution prevention and control is entering the first United Nations "International year of soil".

According to the National soil pollution investigation Bulletin issued last year, the overall soil environment in China is not optimistic, with the national soil pollution exceeding standard rate reaching 16.1%. While the soil environmental problems in industrial and mining wastelands are prominent, the soil environmental quality of cultivated land is even more worrying.

In the face of the severe situation of soil pollution, the speed of national legislation is obviously accelerated. In addition to adding the content of soil remediation to the new Environmental Protection Law, the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently announced a new soil Environmental quality Standard (draft for soliciting opinions), and the formulation and implementation of the soil pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (referred to as "soil Ten articles") has also been put on the agenda.

With the excessive pollution of soil on a large scale and the promotion of national legislation, the industry is expected to give rise to a trillion-level soil remediation market. However, many experts said that although the cake is large, it can not be blindly optimistic, subject to multiple barriers such as technology, capital, business model and so on, it is not realistic for the soil remediation industry to grow big in a short period of time.

Who pays for non-point source pollution?

Compared with the prevention and control of air pollution and water pollution, the prevention and control of soil pollution, one of the "three major battles" of environmental protection, can be described as "loud thunder but little rain".

Since 2013, the State Council has focused on the periphery of large and medium-sized cities, key areas for the prevention and control of heavy metal pollution, and the periphery of centralized drinking water sources, and launched pilot demonstrations on soil pollution control and remediation in Beijing, Shenzhen and other places. but the pilot situation is not ideal.

According to preliminary statistics, the pilot scale of soil pollution remediation actually put on the market in 2013 is only about 5 billion yuan, and only 20 billion yuan in 2014. There is a big gap between the market effect driven by the pilot and the expected.

This has something to do with the fact that the environmental protection industry is basically paid for by the government. Jiang Jiandong, a professor at the School of Life Sciences of Nanjing Agricultural University, told reporters that domestic soil remediation projects are mostly concentrated on construction land with better locations, and the government is willing to pay for the restoration of some abandoned industrial sites into reserve land for commercial development or residential construction.

In fact, with the opening of the curtain of soil remediation, there is more market space for agricultural land. At present, the area of cultivated land to be repaired is about 390 million mu, conservatively estimated that the market space is about 700 billion yuan.

However, Jiang Jiandong said: "the restoration of cultivated land in China is more of a public welfare behavior. Because most of the cultivated land is non-point source pollution with low pollutant concentration and large area, it is difficult to repair and high cost, so few people are willing to contribute or invest in the restoration."

According to Guo Fanli, research director of the CIC Consulting Industry and Policy Research Center, the national cultivated land restoration needs to invest more than 10 trillion yuan, and once the national soil restoration project is launched, the government will become the largest buyer.

However, for farmland-contaminated plots with no commercial value, many local governments are not enthusiastic about funding for restoration. In the face of huge funds for restoration, the financial strength of the government is obviously insufficient.

A number of experts told reporters that at present, the policies, regulations and business models of domestic soil remediation are not very clear, and most enterprises focus on immediate interests and are not willing to take risks, due to the lack of funders. Pesticides, oil and other non-point source pollution of soil remediation is very difficult.

Bioremediation is difficult to play an important role.

Unlike water and atmosphere, soil is the ultimate receptor for 90% of pollutants, such as the sedimentation of pollutants caused by air pollution, the irrigation and infiltration of sewage, and the landfill of solid waste. In the face of this complex governance object, whether the repair technology is advanced and effective has become the key to the success or failure of governance.

Bioremediation is recognized as the most potential soil remediation technology. Jiang Jiandong said that compared with traditional physical and chemical methods, the biggest advantage of bioremediation is that it will not produce secondary pollution and low cost.

For example, in view of heavy metal pollution in the soil, heavy metals can be absorbed and removed by planting hyperaccumulative plants such as centipede grass. This phytoremediation technology can turn some abandoned mines and mountainous areas that can not produce food into cultivated land.

In addition, microbial remediation is more feasible in solving non-point source pollution. Jiang Jiandong said: "through microorganisms and their own active substances enzymes, pesticides, oil and other organic pollutants that are not convenient for centralized treatment can be degraded into non-toxic small molecular compounds, or eventually into carbon dioxide and water."

However, Jiang Jiandong said that foreign bioremediation is already a very large industry, but China is still lagging behind, and there is still an extreme lack of professional soil bioremediation companies.

A person in charge of Hangzhou Earth Environmental Protection Engineering Company told the reporter that although the bioremediation operation is simple and the cost is low, it takes a long time to take effect. In order to catch up with the construction period, most enterprises still adopt other means such as landfill and incineration, and bioremediation is rarely used if there are no special requirements.

Therefore, Jiang Jiandong believes that bioremediation technology should also make efforts on remediation efficiency, such as through the modification or modification of key enzymes to improve the efficiency of microbial remediation. In addition, for some new pollutants, it is necessary to obtain more microbial resources to meet different types of contaminated soil remediation.

Zhao Qiguo, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert in soil science, suggested that while strengthening technological research and development, the state should pay more attention to introducing, absorbing, and digesting foreign advanced technology suitable for national conditions, so as to achieve comprehensive and integrated innovation.

"compared with the development of more than 40 years in Europe and the United States, China's soil remediation industry is still a new industry, there is no good basic accumulation and technology reserve, and it will take a long time to form an environmental remediation industry." Zhao Qiguo said.

Explore the win-win mode

In the face of the blue sea of soil remediation, thousands of soil remediation companies have emerged in recent years, showing a situation of "pack wolves dancing" all over the country. In fact, most enterprises increase their enthusiasm just because they see the potential market, and not many of them can really make money.

According to Zhang Yi, dean of Shanghai Environmental Sanitation Engineering Design Institute, only soil remediation enterprises with "advanced applicable technology and complete sets of equipment", "strong investment and financing ability and project management ability" and "good government relations and internal mechanism" have the conditions to survive and become bigger and stronger.

At the same time, with the introduction of the new "Environmental Protection Law", a lot of capital is ready to soil remediation, but due to the current business model of the industry is relatively single, most of the capital is in a wait-and-see state.

In this regard, Zhang Yi suggested that the state should actively explore a win-win business model for cooperation between the government and enterprises, such as the establishment of special trust funds, to promote the development of China's soil remediation industry through joint efforts.

Guo Fanli suggested that the government should give up part of its future interests in order to attract private investment, such as interest binding for the development of development zones, low-interest loans, or other interests.

The reporter learned that a new business model of "capital restoration" is sprouting, such as joint ventures between enterprises and the government, with part of the money paid in the form of money and the other in the form of land. After the well-managed land is built into an industrial park, the enterprise can, as a developer, recover another part of the profit when attracting investment.

However, because the profit model has a cycle of 10 to 15 years, there is a greater time risk, so the model is still in the observation stage.