In 2023, recovery will constitute the main tone of the development of the environmental protection industry. However, compared with the ardent expectations of practitioners, the final answer sheet handed in by the market is not satisfactory. If the recovery of the semi-annual report is to give confidence to enterprises, then in the third quarter, the overall decline in performance has once again brought the entire industry back to reality. According to incomplete statistics from the All-China Environmental Chamber of Commerce, more than half of the 155 listed environmental companies have experienced a decline in net profit, including giants such as Everbright and High Energy. It is undeniable that the cold is still sweeping the environmental protection industry. At the same time, the local environmental protection state-owned assets army entered the market in a big way, and the management rights were recovered at an accelerated pace. Of course, although the overall situation is hardly optimistic, environmental protection, as an important supporting and helping force for economic and social development, still occupies an unshakable position under the shadow of policies. In particular, as the goal of "30 carbon peaking and 60 carbon neutrality" is expected to approach, the synergy between pollution reduction and carbon reduction, that is, the coordination of greenhouse gas emission reduction and environmental pollutant control, is accelerating the release of opportunities. It is still crucial to further deepen environmental governance with carbon peaking actions, promote high-quality peaking with environmental governance, alternate between the old and new tracks, and reduce emissions in air, water, soil, solid waste, greenhouse gases and other fields. As a result, the environmental protection industry, which has fallen into the vortex of "involution", increasingly needs to follow stable and reliable policies to resist the huge uncertainty currently shrouded in the industry. In this article, environmental protection will sort out and analyze the important national policies and regulations in 2023, and the preliminary estimate is that there are 63 items. 
01 Released in the second half of the year, the governance object is becoming more and more clear
Unlike in 2022, the release of national environmental protection policies in 2023 has been significantly delayed, with more than half of the 63 items being released in the second half of the year. After December 20, there are also major policies such as the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Surrounding Areas and the Fenwei Plain 2023-2024 Autumn and Winter Comprehensive Air Pollution Control Plan", "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Synergy of Sewage Treatment, Pollution Reduction and Carbon Reduction", and "Implementation Guidelines for Eco-Environment-Oriented Development (EOD) Projects (Trial)". This was not the case in the previous two years. In a sense, this not only reflects the complexity of the current situation of ecological and environmental protection governance in China, but also represents the cautious attitude of the government towards the issuance of relevant documents. On the other hand, the "14th Five-Year Plan" began in 2021 and has already gone halfway through 2023. With the improvement of the top-level design system, the environmental protection policy will naturally move in a deeper direction, either as an extension or as a supplement, which means that the current industrial development and actual needs should be more comprehensively analyzed and sorted out, so as to formulate targeted strategies and reach the pain points. For example, the "Plan for Comprehensive Treatment of Air Pollution in the Autumn and Winter of 2023-2024 in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Surrounding Areas and the Fenwei Plain" lasted nearly three months from the public consultation in September to the issuance in December, while the "2021-2022 Autumn and Winter Comprehensive Air Pollution Control Plan" with the same positioning took only about a month. In terms of content, it can also be clearly felt from the title that the 2023 environmental protection policy focuses on a "fine". At the beginning of the year, 16 departments jointly issued the "Ten Sound Articles", that is, the "14th Five-Year Plan" Noise Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan, and the last piece of the puzzle of "water, gas and sound slag" was put in place. In October, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) followed suit by issuing the Notice on the Management of Industrial Noise Emission Permits, which adopts the same pollutant discharge permit model as water and gas slag to manage noise pollution, and will further implement the main responsibility of noise producing units and realize the "one-certificate" supervision of multiple environmental elements. In the field of water treatment, the protection of the water ecological environment in key river basins, the construction of ecologically clean small watersheds, the intensive utilization of water resources, rural water supply, the synergy of water treatment pollution reduction and carbon reduction, black and odorous water bodies, the protection of the Yellow River, the protection of the Yangtze River, and the prevention and control of groundwater pollution have been repeatedly mentionedIn the field of gas treatment, there are continuous improvement of air quality, methane emission control, comprehensive control of air pollution in autumn and winter, greenhouse gas emissions, etcSolid waste disposal focuses on the recycling of retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment, "bamboo instead of plastic", livestock and poultry manure recycling, hazardous waste, biodiesel, waste lead-acid batteries, etc. In addition, the improvement of the environmental rule of law system is also accelerating, and the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate have successively issued documents explaining the applicable law in criminal cases of environmental pollution, stipulating relevant judicial services and litigation process requirements. 02 Two key words appear frequently, and the key points of the next stage of development are clear If you want to refine the keywords of environmental protection in 2023, "double carbon" and "rural" are indispensable. 
Keyword 1: Double Carbon The country has shown with actions that every industry must take action to promote the "double carbon" goal as scheduled. Nowhere is this more evident than at the policy level. For example, in the hot carbon market in the past two years, the "Implementation Plan for the Consolidation and Improvement of Ecosystem Carbon Sequestration Capacity" issued in April pointed out that the value of ecological products will be promoted through the joint efforts of science and technology and policiesThe Measures for the Administration of Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Trading (for Trial Implementation) put CCER on the agenda and gave a new methodology, highlighting the role of "voluntary" to ensure the orderly operation of the national voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction trading marketAs an important supporting document, the Implementation Rules for the Validation and Verification of Emission Reductions for Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Projects stipulate the basis, basic procedures and general requirements for the verification of voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction projects. According to the data, from January 3, 2023 to December 29, 2023, the national carbon market operated for a total of 242 trading days. The annual trading volume of carbon emission allowances is 21.2 billion tons, with an annual turnover of 1444.4 billion yuan. As the year of annual carbon emission settlement, the willingness to trade in the national carbon market will be greatly increased in 2023. In July, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment also issued a special notice on the work related to the annual carbon emission allowance settlement in the national carbon emission trading market, which extended the submission time, and the meaning of support is very obvious. At the same time, in promoting the pilot, the National Development and Reform Commission has issued the "National Carbon Peak Pilot Construction Plan", which intends to select 100 typical representative cities and parksIn terms of promoting the rule of law, the Supreme People's Court issued the "Opinions on Completely, Accurately, and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept and Providing Judicial Services for Actively and Steadily Promoting Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality".In terms of promoting the construction of the standard system, 11 departments jointly compiled the "Guidelines for the Construction of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality Standard System". Keyword 2: Rural At the beginning of 2023, it is expected that the first document "Opinions of the Communist Party of China on Comprehensively Promoting the Key Work of Rural Revitalization in 2023" once again emphasizes the "improvement of the rural living environment". The overall direction remains unchanged, but the expression has changed from "continuing to implement the five-year action for the improvement of the rural human settlements" to "solidly promoting the improvement of the rural human settlements", that is, in addition to consolidating the previous renovation results, it is necessary to continuously strengthen the governance. Based on this, the treatment of black and odorous water bodies in rural areas and the improvement of solid waste disposal capacity at the county level have once again aroused discussions. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Pilot Work on the Treatment of Rural Black and Odorous Water Bodies in 2023", which clarified that the Ministry of Finance will give fixed rewards and subsidies to cities included in the scope of support according to the amount of project investment and the total area of rural black and odorous water bodies declared for treatment, and recommend up to 2 cities per provinceIn August, the Ministry of Water Resources' "Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the High-quality Development of Rural Water Supply" mentioned that it will take 3-5 years to achieve the integration of urban and rural water supply and the proportion of large-scale projects covering the rural population will be significantly increased. From water control to water supply, the more detailed and wonderful the rural water articles are. In March, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the Comprehensive Prevention and Control of Agricultural Non-point Source Pollution in the Whole Factor and Whole Chain of the National Agricultural Green Development Pilot Zone", the "Notice on Making Up for the Shortcomings of Public Health and Environmental Facilities and Carrying out Urban and Rural Environmental Sanitation Cleanup and Remediation" jointly issued by the six departments in August, and the "Notice on Coordinating and Standardizing Satellite Remote Sensing Monitoring of Cultivated Land Protection" issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources in December, which respectively pointed to the construction of rural green development pilot areas, rural sanitation and rural cultivated land protection and monitoring. With the implementation of these policies, the rural environmental protection market opportunities are also being released at an accelerated pace, and there is huge room for growth in the future. 03 Accelerate the launch of the pilot project and explore the second half of the "14th Five-Year Plan" A closer look at the environmental protection policies in 2023 shows that "pilot" and "trial" appear frequently. The national carbon peak construction is in the pilot, the treatment of black and odorous water bodies in rural areas is in the pilot, the hazardous waste collection of small and micro enterprises is in the pilot, the promotion and application of biodiesel is in the pilot, and the inter-provincial transfer management of lead-acid batteries is also in the pilot. The so-called pilot, if tried well, will be widely promoted. For an industry with a large upfront investment such as environmental protection, this experience is indispensable. At the same time, the trial implementation of the policy provides a reference for grasping the actual implementation effect and finding and solving problems. In 2023, the "Detailed Rules for the Scoring of Water Ecological Assessment Indicators in the Yangtze River Basin (Trial)", "Technical Guidelines for the Governance of Small and Medium-sized Rivers (Trial)", "Technical Guidelines for the Delineation of Key Areas for Groundwater Pollution Prevention and Control (Trial)", "Detailed Rules for the Pre-study of National Ecological Environment Monitoring Standards (Trial)", "Administrative Measures for Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Trading (Trial)", and "Implementation Guidelines for Eco-Environment-Oriented Development (EOD) Projects (Trial)" have been promulgated one after another. EOD and so on are all the focus of environmental protection work in the past two years, and in the year of the "14th Five-Year Plan", it is quite a sense of exploring the way for the next work. In addition, in 2023, the promotion of the development of the private economy has also been repeatedly emphasized at the policy level, and the environmental protection industry, which accounts for more than 70% of small and micro enterprises, has been benefited one after another. The "Opinions of the Communist Party of China on Promoting the Development and Growth of the Private Economy" deploys key tasks around six aspects, and puts forward the goal of enabling all forms of ownership to equally use production factors, participate in market competition fairly, and be equally protected by lawSubsequently, the State Administration for Market Regulation officially issued the "Several Measures of the Market Supervision Department to Promote the Development of the Private Economy", proposing 22 measures to promote the development of the private economy to further boost the confidence in the development of the private economyThe National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance pointed out in the "Guiding Opinions on Standardizing the Implementation of the New Mechanism of Private-Backed Partnerships" that private enterprises will be encouraged to participate in new projects (including reconstruction and expansion) of private-private partnerships to the greatest extent. All in all, 2023 is destined to be extraordinary for environmental protection practitioners. Tsingshan Industry Review also believes that in the macroeconomic situation, the pull between environmental protection and the economy is very obvious, and the sense of future and direction of the environmental protection industry is particularly important in the middle of the "14th Five-Year Plan".