[Chinese Mainland] Shandong Water Conservation Action Plan Officially Issued

Introduction

Shandong Province has issued the "Action Plan for Comprehensively Building a Water Conservation Institutional and Policy System (2026–2030年)", proposing quantified targets of achieving a urban reclaimed water utilization rate of 60% and unconventional water source utilization of 25亿 cubic meters by 2030年, systematically deploying industrial wastewater recycling and unconventional water utilization systems, and providing an institutional lever for rigid constraint management of water resources in water-scarce northern provinces.

Background

Shandong is a major province in terms of economy and population in China, and is also one of the provinces with severe water resource shortages. Its per capita water resources are far below the national average, and the contradiction between water supply and demand has long been prominent. Under the national strategy of ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin, Shandong has been assigned rigid constraints of dual control over total water use and intensity. How to support industrial, agricultural, and urban water demand without adding new conventional water sources, or with only minimal additions, is a practical issue facing the entire province. Promoting the large-scale utilization of unconventional water sources such as reclaimed water, seawater desalination, and rainwater harvesting has become a key path to solving the problem, and is also an inevitable choice for implementing the requirements of "determining the city, land, population, and production by water availability."

Core

The action plan centers on the main line of "comprehensively building a water conservation institutional and policy system" and proposes 20 key tasks. In terms of reclaimed water utilization, the goal is to achieve a urban reclaimed water utilization rate of 60% by 2030年, which means that a larger proportion of tailwater from urban sewage treatment plants will be converted into a second water source usable for industrial cooling, ecological water replenishment, municipal miscellaneous use, and greening irrigation. In terms of unconventional water, it proposes that unconventional water utilization reach 25亿 cubic meters by 2030年, covering diverse water sources such as reclaimed water, seawater desalination, mine water, and rainwater, forming an effective substitute for traditional surface water and groundwater.

The plan also emphasizes industrial wastewater recycling: it sets water efficiency benchmarks and access requirements for high water-consuming industries, promotes internal cascading water use, quality-based reuse, and the construction of park-level water circulation systems; at the same time, it improves the reclaimed water pricing formation mechanism and pipeline network infrastructure to solve the implementation problem of "water available but no one uses it, and those who want to use it cannot connect." Supporting systems for water rights trading, water conservation incentives, and assessment accountability are also established, transforming water conservation targets from advocacy requirements into quantifiable and assessable hard constraints, ensuring that all indicators are implemented in detail and put into effect.

Industry Significance

Shandong has written reclaimed water utilization rate and unconventional water utilization into a provincial-level action plan and set hard targets, releasing a clear signal that unconventional water sources are moving from "supplementary" to "mainstay." For the sewage treatment and reclaimed water industry, 25亿 cubic meters of unconventional water utilization space means enormous demand for advanced tailwater treatment, transmission and distribution networks, and industrial reuse engineering construction. Policy drivers combined with improved pricing mechanisms are expected to accelerate urban reclaimed water from demonstration to large-scale commercial application, and also provide a provincial model for water-scarce regions to explore a resource-circulating water utility system, driving market growth in related technologies and operational services.