Recently, ten departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Implementation Plan for the High-Quality Development of the Green Building Materials Industry, specifying that by 2026 annual revenue of green building materials will exceed 300 billion yuan, with average annual growth of over 10% from 2024 to 2026. Key tasks include accelerating intelligent production, deepening the Green Building Materials Going Rural initiative, guiding green consumption, and improving the standards system.

Cultivating Distinctive Industrial Clusters

The Plan specifies that by 2026, more than 30 distinctive industrial clusters will be cultivated in total, more than 50 demonstration projects for green building materials application will be built, no fewer than 100 cities will implement government procurement policies, and green building material product certification certificates will reach 12,000, further strengthening the ability of green building materials to lead high-quality development of the building materials industry and safeguard improvements in building quality. By 2030, the level of "energy saving, emission reduction, low carbon, safety, convenience and recyclability" throughout the full life cycle of green building materials will be further improved, and a group of green building materials manufacturers and product brands with high international recognition will emerge.

Key tasks proposed in the Plan include: accelerating intelligent production, promoting coordinated industrial development, deepening the Green Building Materials Going Rural initiative, guiding green consumption, optimizing innovation mechanisms, improving the standards system, and strengthening certification support.

In promoting coordinated industrial development, the Plan calls for accelerating the cultivation of green building materials industrial clusters, encouraging regions with suitable conditions to combine local resource endowments and market demand, adapt to local conditions and arrange by industry, develop distinctive green building materials clusters, and build green industrial chains and supply chains. Support will be given to localities in building new industrialization demonstration bases focused on green building materials. Areas with concentrated industrial solid waste such as tailings, waste rock, slag and industrial by-product gypsum, as well as agricultural solid waste, are encouraged to establish green building materials parks based on coupled development and to create "zero-waste parks."

At the same time, comprehensive green building materials enterprises with strong core competitiveness and major driving effects will be cultivated, giving play to their leading and driving role in product innovation, technological breakthroughs, factor aggregation, upstream and downstream collaboration, and ecosystem building. Cultivation of small and medium-sized enterprises will be strengthened, with support for fostering manufacturing single-champion enterprises in fields such as wall materials, decorative and renovation materials, doors and windows products, and waterproof and thermal insulation materials.

Promoting Upgrading of Building Materials Products

The Plan proposes strengthening comprehensive measures such as process upgrading, energy substitution, energy saving and consumption reduction, and resource recycling to achieve dual reductions in pollutants and carbon emissions. It calls for implementing technological transformation, orderly promoting the construction of ultra-low emission facilities in the cement industry, continuously releasing carbon emission reduction technology guidelines for subsectors, and supporting key industries such as cement, flat glass, architectural and sanitary ceramics, and glass fiber and products in carrying out integrated application of energy-saving, carbon-reducing and pollution-reducing technologies.

A research report by Cinda Securities shows that the main channels for carbon reduction in building materials include substitution, optimizing production technology, optimizing energy use, and reducing unit consumption. Emissions from the production process account for more than about 50% of total carbon dioxide emissions in the building materials industry, making raw material substitution crucial.

In optimizing the energy mix, the Plan specifies advancing clean energy substitution for existing coal-fired captive power plants (boilers), steadily promoting the conversion of existing industrial kilns using high-pollution fuels to industrial waste heat, electricity, natural gas and other alternatives, increasing the proportion of renewable energy such as solar and wind power, raising the level of electrification in end-use energy, and encouraging the application of alternative energy sources such as hydrogen, biomass fuels and refuse-derived fuels in industrial kilns such as cement kilns. It also calls for promoting cleaner production, encouraging enterprises to control resource consumption from the source, improving resource use efficiency, and reducing waste emissions.

Accelerating intelligent production. The Plan calls for continuously promoting the development of intelligent manufacturing in the building materials industry, accelerating deep integration of the entire green building materials industrial chain with the new generation of information technology, and promoting intelligent production, large-scale customization and service-oriented extension of green building materials. It also calls for accelerating integration of the green building materials industry with the industrial internet system, encouraging key enterprises to build networked collaboration platforms connecting upstream and downstream enterprises, promoting data interoperability and identifier resolution, and realizing resource sharing, collaborative manufacturing and collaborative services.

Promoting upgrading of building materials products, the Plan calls for accelerating the low-carbon and product-oriented development of basic raw materials such as cement and flat glass, the composite and lightweight development of building materials products such as wall materials and thermal insulation materials, and the functional and prefabricated development of decorative and renovation materials such as ceiling, wall and floor materials and decorative panels. Around the needs of low-carbon, zero-carbon and negative-carbon projects and green low-carbon construction, new green building materials such as new low-carbon cementitious materials, low (zero) volatile organic compound (VOCs) content materials, phase-change energy storage materials, carbon-fixing materials and all-solid-waste cementitious materials will be developed.

Deepening the Green Building Materials Going Rural initiative. The Plan calls for studying ways to further enrich and improve the Green Building Materials Going Rural activity, exploring a shift from taking "green building materials products" to rural areas toward taking "green building materials system solution providers plus distinctive rural construction service providers" to rural areas. Support will be given to localities in guiding production enterprises, e-commerce platforms, stores and shopping malls to participate in the activity, and key production enterprises are encouraged to formulate online and offline discount and promotion measures to provide consumers with more cost-effective products. Support will be given to localities in building demonstration projects using local materials and adapting to local conditions, strengthening typical and distinctive demonstrations, combining with projects such as modern livable rural housing, energy-saving renovation of rural housing and modern agricultural facilities, promoting new construction methods, cultivating green building materials system solution providers, and promoting green building materials to help improve the quality of rural housing. Localities are encouraged to create a group of distinctive rural construction service providers suited to local rural consumers according to the characteristics of rural buildings in different regions.