[Chinese Mainland] Implementation of the "15th Five-Year Plan for Urban Renewal": 100,000 km of new and upgraded sewage pipelines, and a total new and upgraded wastewater treatment capacity of 25 million m³/day

The "15th Five-Year Plan for Urban Renewal" issued by the State Council has defined the investment scope for urban water systems over the next five years: nationwide construction and renovation of urban underground pipeline networks totaling approximately 77 万 km, including sewage pipelines of approximately 10 万 km and drainage pipelines of approximately 17.5 万 km; newly built and renovated wastewater treatment facilities with a total capacity of 2500 万 m³/day. During the same period, the "15th Five-Year Plan for Building a Beautiful China" sets 18 items of main indicators, raising the proportion of good-quality water bodies to 85% and the rural domestic sewage treatment rate to 70%. The superposition of these two documents effectively delineates the scale and direction of the water market for the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.

Of 77 万 km of pipeline networks, how much is water-related

The "15th Five-Year Plan for Urban Renewal" lists urban underground pipeline networks as one of the "six networks" of infrastructure, providing a categorized mileage table rather than a general total.

• Sewage pipelines of approximately 10 万 km — broken down by industry standards, during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, sewage pipelines will be renovated by 10 万 km and newly built by 19.5 万 km. The new construction scale is nearly twice the renovation scale, indicating that incremental growth is still extending toward new towns and industrial parks.
• Drainage pipelines of approximately 17.5 万 km — the focus is on the construction and renovation of drainage channels, pumping stations, flood drainage corridors, storage facilities, and smart platforms, while continuing to implement urban sewage pipeline network construction and enhance domestic sewage collection and treatment capacity.
• Water supply pipelines of approximately 17.5 万 km — 19.1 万 km newly built and 17.5 万 km renovated, with the main thrust being the renewal and renovation of aging and damaged municipal water distribution networks.
• The remainder — gas pipelines of approximately 20 万 km and heating pipelines of approximately 12 万 km, totaling approximately 77 万 km.

A comparison with the baseline makes this more intuitive: currently, China's urban underground pipeline networks have a total length of approximately 390 万 km, with approximately 7700 km of underground utility tunnels cumulatively built. The 77 万 km to be constructed and renovated during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period is equivalent to approximately one-fifth of the existing total length. Industry estimates place the total investment in this batch of underground pipeline networks at over 5 万 billion yuan, making it one of the infrastructure investment directions with the highest certainty during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.

2500 万 m³/day: The structural changes behind the capacity target

The total capacity for new construction and renovation of wastewater treatment facilities is set at 2500 万 m³/day, with another industry benchmark mentioning a cumulative increase of 2268 万 tons/day in urban wastewater treatment capacity. However, the real highlight is not the total volume but the structure.

• From "capacity expansion" to "quality improvement" — during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, upgrading and renovation is expected to unlock over 5000 亿 yuan in market space, a scale no less significant than the new construction market. Pipeline network renovation and integrated plant-network operation and maintenance are explicitly listed as core incremental markets for wastewater treatment enterprises.
• From "plants" to "integrated plant-network" — the document requires promoting the establishment of a long-term mechanism for coordinated construction and operation of plants and networks, and exploring technical routes for controlling wet-weather overflow pollution in urban drainage systems. This means the assessment scope is expanding from effluent water quality to the entire collection—conveyance—treatment chain, with influent concentration, collection rate, and overflow frequency all entering the evaluation system.
• From "compliance" to "resource recovery" — the reclaimed water utilization rate target is to be raised from the current 25% to over 40%; the rural domestic sewage treatment rate target is set at 70%, an increase of 15 percentage points compared to 2025 年.

The superposition of these three shifts points to the same thing: the yardstick for evaluating a wastewater treatment plant is growing longer. In the past, only the discharge outlet mattered; now, influent concentration, pipeline network coverage rate, wet-weather overflow control rate, reclaimed water reuse ratio, and unit power consumption must all be considered.

Alignment with the "15th Five-Year Plan for Building a Beautiful China"

The two plans were finalized successively in 2026 年 9 月, and their indicators can mutually corroborate each other.

• Indicator System—The "Beautiful China Construction 15th Five-Year Plan" sets 18 items of main indicators across 4 areas: improvement of ecological and environmental quality, coordinated pollution reduction and carbon reduction, ecosystem protection, and ecological and environmental risk prevention and control, of which 6 are binding and 12 are anticipated, with PM2.5 concentration and the proportion of good-quality water bodies included in binding assessment.
• Core Water Indicators—Taking into comprehensive consideration the water environment and water ecology, the proportion of good-quality water bodies is to be raised to 85%; governance priorities are extended to black-odorous water bodies in county towns and rural areas; the rural domestic sewage treatment rate is to reach 70%, and environmental remediation is to be completed in 8 万 administrative villages.
• Engineering Levers—20 major projects with supporting and leading roles are planned and proposed, with the "Water Ecological Environment Governance and Protection and Restoration" project deployed under the clear-water direction; at the same time, it is required to implement the construction of green and low-carbon benchmark urban sewage treatment plants and strengthen the efficient coordination of "plant-network integration" planning, construction, and operation and maintenance.

It is worth noting that "Beautiful Rivers and Lakes, Beautiful Bays, Beautiful Villages" are listed as a batch of key tasks, while small and micro water bodies and black-odorous water bodies in county towns and rural areas are explicitly included in the direction of governance extension for the first time—precisely the areas where pipeline networks and treatment facilities have been weakest in coverage in the past.

Four Reminders for Practitioners

The plan provides direction, but actual implementation still has to pass several hurdles.

• Clarify the pipeline network's true condition before discussing upgrading standards—Low influent concentrations are often not a problem of the plant, but of misconnections, leakage, and external water intrusion in the pipeline network. Blindly upgrading standards before the pipeline network is fully investigated is equivalent to using high-energy-consumption processes to treat diluted sewage, resulting in an extremely poor input-output ratio.
• Rainwater-sewage separation must be coordinated with overflow control—Simply carrying out separation renovation cannot fully solve wet-weather overflow; it needs to be combined with storage facilities, smart platforms, and improved pumping station capacity. Otherwise, investment results will be slow to materialize and assessments will be difficult to pass.
• Reclaimed water scale must be determined by users—The 40% utilization rate target depends on actual usage, not capacity. It is recommended to separately lock in users and pricing mechanisms for three categories—industrial cooling, municipal miscellaneous use, and ecological replenishment—and then work backward to determine capacity and pipeline routing.
• Rural sewage governance must account for operation and maintenance costs—A treatment rate of 70% means a large number of decentralized facilities will be put into operation, and operation and maintenance costs and professional manpower will become long-term pressures. Priority should be given to process routes that are low in energy consumption, easy to maintain, and capable of remote monitoring.

Our Judgment

TIANYI TECH has long provided sewage treatment and reclaimed water reuse system solutions to municipal and industrial park clients. We believe that the core of this round of opportunities in the "15th Five-Year Plan" is not how many plants are newly built, but truly managing the plants and networks already built and truly putting the effluent to use. We recommend that industrial park operators and investors, when preparing project proposals, demonstrate the three indicators of influent concentration improvement, wet-weather overflow control, and reclaimed water user lock-in on an equal footing with treatment capacity, and clearly define the operation and maintenance assessment criteria at the bidding stage. The plan gives mileage and capacity figures, but how much is ultimately delivered depends on the granularity of preliminary demonstration for each project.

About TIANYI LIMITED: TIANYI TECH is deeply engaged in the field of sewage treatment and reclaimed water reuse, committed to providing efficient, low-carbon, and sustainable water treatment solutions for municipal and industrial clients.