Standardization Environmental standards play a leading, standardizing and guaranteeing role in the protection of the ecological environment and the construction of ecological civilization, which is an important means to implement environmental protection laws and regulations, and is also an important basis for promoting accurate, scientific and law-based pollution control.
01Environmental standards play a supporting role in environmental regulations.
The provisions and requirements of laws and regulations are usually more principled, have a long validity period and are generally applicable, and the implementation needs to be different from place to place, concretized and quantified before they can be operated. For example, Article 36 of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law stipulates that units that emit dust into the atmosphere must take dust removal measures. Strictly limit the emission of exhaust gases and dust containing toxic substances into the atmosphere;Those that really need to be discharged must be purified and do not exceed the prescribed emission standards. If this provision of the law is not supported by standards, it is not clear what is a toxic substanceAre the measures taken effective?What is a strict restriction?It can only be a general call, and cannot be inspected, supervised, and assessed.
The national "Air Pollutant Emission Standards" make quantitative provisions on pollution sources, different emission methods, different emission rates, monitoring methods, control points, types of toxic substances and their maximum allowable emission concentrations in different regions. Each pollutant discharger can find the specific requirements that they must meet in the standard, so as to implement the requirements of the regulations to each pollutant discharger one by one, it can be said that environmental standards are the basic means to ensure the implementation of environmental laws and regulations. Due to the irreplaceable role of standards, the vast majority of countries in the world have adopted legislation and cited standards in laws and regulations to achieve the goal of governing the environment according to law. This is a prominent role for environmental standards.
02 standard is the summary and accumulation of environmental protection scientific and technological achievements and practical experience.
The seriousness, scientificity, and feasibility of the standards are like laws, and each standard is the crystallization of scientific research achievements and practical experience so far. For example, the determination of the limit value in the air quality standard is based on a series of scientific research results, including: the study of the harmful effects of different concentrations of various pollutants in the environment on the human body, organisms and buildings;Necessary industrial toxicological experiments and epidemiological investigations;Research on the correlation between pollutant doses and environmental effects. At the same time, national conditions and regional differences are taken into account, so that the standards are both scientific and reasonable, and feasible.
The process of formulating standards is the process of standardizing scientific and technological achievements and practical experienceThe real strength of the standard is actually the process of popularizing these achievements and experiences;The revision of the standard is to replace the old achievements with new achievements and new experiences. Old experience is a process of sublimation, accumulation and improvement. Environmental protection work is based on environmental science and environmental engineering technology, and environmental standards are the standardized summary of scientific and technological knowledge and practical experience accumulated by the society as of a certain point in time. Environmental standards are not only necessary for environmental management, but also an important resource in the treasury of environmental science.
03Environmental standards play a supporting role in environmental regulations.
It is a common practice to supervise and manage the environment in accordance with the law. In the process of administrative law enforcement, the main basis for making illegal determinations of administrative counterparts is environmental technical standards. This is because the standards (environmental quality standards and emission standards) contain restrictive provisions regarding the allowable content of polluting factors and the allowable emission levels of toxic factors. Only these regulations that exceed the standard (excessive emissions) are considered illegal.
In addition, pollution sources located in areas where the total discharge control of key pollutants is implemented must also meet the total emission control requirements. This is the basis for administrative law enforcement. Environmental standards do more than just these three things. For example, environmental quality standards are restrictive provisions on various harmful substances and factors in the environment based on national laws and regulations, the country's economic and technological level at a certain time and the objective requirements for improving the environment. It not only stipulates the allowable content of each dye factor in the environment, but also stipulates the indicators that natural factors should have that cannot be reduced. Such standards are a scientific basis for measuring the quality of the environment. Its role is multifaceted, it can be the basis for environmental planning and target setting for different water system areas and urban reclamation, as well as the basis for environmental assessment, environmental management and the formulation of other standards.
A typical example of how environmental standards play a role.
1 case. Take the "Ambient Air Quality Standard" released in 2012 as an example, which can be said to have kicked off the prelude to the battle against pollution. Zhejiang Province took the lead in implementing this standard in 2013 and has been working hard for a long time to lead to significant improvement in the quality of the air environment. Compared with 2013, 2022 is divided into districts and cities PM25 The concentration was 24 micrograms per cubic meter, a decrease of 61%, and the proportion of good days increased by 21 percentage points, and the blue sky and white clouds have become the norm of the ecological environment in Zhejiang Province.
2 cases. For example, in 2018, Zhejiang Province introduced air pollutant emission standards for coal-fired power plants, which are on average 50% stricter than the national special standards for thermal power. Through the implementation of ultra-low emission technology transformation, the industry's particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other major pollutant emissions have decreased by more than 90% on average compared with 2013, effectively promoting the clean and efficient development of the industry, and the technology has been promoted to steel, cement, boiler and other industries.