[Chinese Mainland] Five Departments of Shandong Issue the "Action Plan for Comprehensively Building a Water-Saving Institutional and Policy System (2026–2030年)", Deploying 20 Key Tasks to Systematically Establish an Industrial Wastewater Recycling and Unconventional Water Utilization System

Introduction

2026年9月28日, the Shandong Provincial Department of Water Resources, the Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, the Provincial Department of Finance, and the Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, among five departments, jointly issued the "Action Plan for Comprehensively Building a Water-Saving Institutional and Policy System (2026–2030年)". With a pace of advancement defined as "build the framework in one year, achieve results in three years, establish the system in five years", the plan proposes 20 key tasks and 44 specific measures from four aspects, and for the first time incorporates industrial wastewater recycling and unconventional water utilization systems such as Reclaimed Water into the top-level framework of provincial-level systematic integration of water-saving institutions, marking Shandong's water-saving governance's shift from the single construction of a "water-saving society" to a new governance stage of coordinated "institution + market + technology".

Background

Shandong is a major water-scarce province in northern China, with per capita water resources availability less than one-sixth of the national average. Groundwater overexploitation, surface water development approaching the red line, and the long-standing conflict between industrial and urban water use persist. Over the past decade or more, Shandong has accumulated extensive experience in agricultural water saving, groundwater overexploitation control, and county-level water-saving society compliance construction, but institutional supply has shown characteristics of being "fragmented and project-based": policies such as water use quotas, water rights trading, unconventional water allocation, and water-saving incentives have advanced separately, lacking horizontal coordination and vertical connectivity. As the dual control constraints on total water use and intensity during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period tighten, and as rigid water demand rises from industrial parks, energy bases, and major water diversion projects, Shandong urgently needs institutional integration to break the governance bottleneck of "having policies but lacking coordination". The "Action Plan" was issued precisely against this background, intending to integrate fragmented water-saving policy tools into a set of institutional and policy systems that can be implemented, assessed, and traded.

Core

The core content of the plan can be grasped from four dimensions.

First, in the industrial sector, "wastewater recycling" is placed at the front end of the institutional design. The plan explicitly requires strict water use quota management, strengthened water metering, promotion of industrial wastewater recycling, improvement of water rights trading mechanisms, and development of the water-saving industry. This means that water use in high-water-consumption industries such as steel, chemicals, papermaking, printing and dyeing, and food processing will gradually shift from "withdrawing water by volume" to "using water by efficiency", and Reclaimed Water Reuse, series water use, and cascade utilization at the park and enterprise levels will be incorporated into a dual track of assessment and incentives. For Reclaimed Water and Reclaimed Water Reuse services, the institutional side has for the first time listed "recycling" and the "water-saving industry" as policy objectives in parallel, opening up market space driven by compliance.

Second, in the urban sector, water budget management pilots are being rolled out across the board. The plan uniformly incorporates unconventional water such as Reclaimed Water, desalinated seawater, and brackish water into water resource allocation and budget management, and proposes improving the unconventional water utilization system and establishing a Reclaimed Water monitoring information sharing mechanism. A water budget is essentially an "income and expenditure accounting" of regional water use, counting unconventional water as an increment on the "income side", changing the past practice of using surface water and groundwater as the single accounting baseline, and clearing institutional obstacles for Reclaimed Water to enter the "main ledger" of urban water supply.

Third, green financial instruments are being implemented. "Water-saving loans" and others have been written into the appendix of the plan, meaning water-saving projects can obtain low-cost funds through credit interest subsidies, risk compensation, project financing, and other means, addressing the pain point of water-saving retrofits being "large in investment and slow in payback". Combined with the water rights trading mechanism, Shandong seeks to build a market-oriented closed loop in which "saved water is a tradable asset".

Fourth, 44 specific measures form an assessable advancement checklist. The plan does not stop at principled statements, but breaks down each task into responsible departments, time nodes, and quantitative targets, facilitating supervision and evaluation. This "plan + checklist" approach to advancement also reflects the transformation of local water-saving governance from "advocacy-based" to "hard-constraint-based".

From a national perspective, as a typical sample combining a major industrial province and a major water-scarce province, Shandong's path of institutional integration has demonstrative significance for similar regions in North China and Northwest China. Writing industrial wastewater recycling and unconventional water utilization systems into a provincial-level action plan essentially elevates "sewage resource recovery" from an end-of-pipe option in environmental governance to an institutional increment on the water resource supply side.