Shenzhen Issues First Group Standard for Reclaimed Water Supply Management: Negotiated Pricing and Trading System Complete the "Last Mile" for Wastewater Resource Recovery

[TIANYI TECH News] On August 1, 2026, the group standard Guide for Reclaimed Wastewater Supply Management, led by Shenzhen Longhua Drainage Co., Ltd., was officially released. The standard covers the entire chain of water source allocation, engineering construction, operation and maintenance, and pricing and trading, and for the first time systematically defines the pricing principles, cost accounting methods, supply-demand negotiation process and the boundary of rights and responsibilities between both parties for reclaimed water, while promoting a tiered pricing mechanism of "pricing by use and premium pricing for premium quality". The industry widely believes that this standard completes the long-missing market-institutional puzzle piece of China's wastewater resource recovery, and is a key step for reclaimed water moving from an "engineered product" to a "market commodity".

1. Background: Reclaimed Water Can Be "Produced and Delivered", but Has Long Been "Difficult to Price and Recover"

Over the past decade or more, China's reclaimed water utilization capacity has expanded rapidly. To date, the country's reclaimed water production capacity has exceeded 80 million cubic meters per day, and since the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, a batch of high-quality reclaimed water plants has been built successively in water-scarce and high-load regions such as the Yellow River Basin, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta. The technical issues have largely been resolved: process combinations such as ultrafiltration + reverse osmosis dual membranes, MBR + UV, and ozone-activated carbon advanced treatment can already stably produce effluent that meets industrial cooling, boiler feed, municipal miscellaneous uses, and even Class III and Class IV surface water standards.

However, "being deliverable" does not equal "being recoverable". The industry has long faced three institutional obstacles:

• No basis for pricing. In most cities, reclaimed water prices are determined by a "one-size-fits-all" government guidance price, which neither distinguishes high-grade industrial reuse from low-end uses such as municipal greening, nor reflects the real costs of incremental processes such as dual-membrane, fluoride removal and desalination. The more operators invest, the greater their losses.

• No standard for cost verification. The production cost of reclaimed water involves multiple items such as membrane replacement, chemicals, power consumption and network pressurization, lacking a unified accounting basis. Supply and demand parties talk past each other in negotiations, and project financing and performance assessment both lack a credible benchmark.

• No rules for trading. Terms such as water volume commitments, water quality responsibilities, supply-interruption compensation and metering methods between reclaimed water suppliers and users are scattered across individual agreements. Once water quality fluctuates or users reduce volume, disputes are hard to adjudicate, and park enterprises dare not sign long-term contracts.

As a result, many reclaimed water plants operate at low load for a long time after completion, and the phenomenon of facilities "sitting idle" is not uncommon in some regions. The lag in institutional supply has become the core bottleneck constraining the scale-up of wastewater resource recovery.

2. Core Content: Whole-Chain Standardization, the First Negotiated Pricing and Trading Framework

The breakthrough of this Shenzhen group standard lies in regulating reclaimed water as a "commodity" rather than merely accepting it as an "engineering project". Its core content can be summarized in four aspects:

First, water source allocation and engineering construction now have a clear basis. The standard defines the priority selection of reclaimed water sources, the method for estimating supply scale, and the supporting requirements for pipe networks and storage facilities, avoiding the mismatch of "capacity built but users not secured", and improving the certainty of project investment from the source.

Second, operation and maintenance form a closed-loop specification. For online water quality monitoring, inspection of key process units, and emergency response and information reporting for sudden water quality anomalies, the standard provides an actionable checklist, offering technical safeguards for supply reliability.

Third, cost accounting is unified for the first time. The standard systematically lists the constituent items and allocation principles of production costs, incorporating membrane module depreciation, chemical consumption, electricity, labor and network delivery into a unified framework, giving reclaimed water prices an auditable and re-verifiable cost base for the first time.

Fourth, negotiated pricing and trading mechanisms take shape. This is the most pioneering part of the standard — it promotes "pricing by use and premium pricing for premium quality" tiered pricing: high-grade industrial reuse (such as scenarios with strict requirements for conductivity, chloride, fluoride and other indicators) and general miscellaneous uses such as municipal greening and road washing are priced in separate tiers; at the same time, it establishes an open and transparent supply-demand negotiation process, defines the complete chain of quoting, price verification, contracting, metering, settlement and dispute resolution, and delineates the two-way responsibilities for water volume and water quality.

3. Industry Significance: A Paradigm Shift from "Government Pricing" to "Market Negotiation"

The value of the standard extends beyond Shenzhen. Its demonstrative significance is reflected on three levels:

For operators, a closed revenue loop becomes possible. With a cost-accounting basis and a premium-quality pricing mechanism, every incremental investment by operators in advanced treatment can be reflected in the price, and the cash-flow model of the "investment-construction-operation integration" model becomes calculable, financeable and sustainable for the first time.

For water-using enterprises, long-term water costs become predictable. Taking the Sha'erqin reclaimed water workshop in Hohhot as an example, park enterprises using high-quality reclaimed water can save 7,000–8,000 yuan per month on water charges. Only when prices and responsibility clauses are clear can enterprises dare to incorporate reclaimed water into their long-term water balance planning, replacing fresh-water intake quotas.

For regulators, allocation efficiency is markedly improved. Tiered pricing directs high-quality water to industrial users who are most sensitive to water quality and most willing to pay, and directs ordinary water to scenarios such as greening and river replenishment, achieving a cascade allocation of "good water for good use, lower water for lower use" that is closer to resource endowments than uniform pricing.

Notably, this institutional exploration is resonating with the evolution of the technology side. Recent industry developments show that AI precision aeration can already reduce plant-wide power consumption by 15%–25% and shorten the investment payback period to 6–12 months; membrane materials and short-flow processes have halved chemical consumption and reduced the footprint by more than 60%. Technological cost reduction and institutional pricing are "moving toward each other", and the economics of reclaimed water projects are improving rapidly.

4. Industry Perspective and TIANYI TECH's Practice Path

As a technical service provider long focused on industrial wastewater treatment and water reuse, TIANYI TECH Co., Ltd. believes that the signal from the Shenzhen group standard is very clear: competition in the reclaimed water industry is shifting from "whether you can meet treatment standards" to "whether you can sell the water and get the accounts right".

Around this shift, TIANYI TECH's capability layout is highly aligned with the standard's requirements:

• On the process side, the company's "pretreatment + biological treatment + dual-membrane + salt separation" process package, accumulated in high-salinity, refractory industrial wastewater, can stably produce reclaimed water that meets high-grade industrial reuse requirements, corresponding precisely to the high-value tier in tiered pricing;

• On the operation side, the company's custody operation of industrial park wastewater plants can bring online monitoring, emergency response and cost ledgers under unified management, providing a data ledger for standards-based pricing and compliant trading;

• On the commercial side, the company's "investment-construction-operation integration" model inherently requires a stable revenue loop, and the standardization of pricing and trading mechanisms will directly improve the certainty of project investment returns.

We believe that, as Shenzhen's experience spreads to other water-scarce cities and industrial parks, reclaimed water will gradually form a mature market structure of "water quality grading — price tiering — clear responsibility". For park managers and high-water-consumption enterprises, now is the window period to re-examine their water balance plans and lock in long-term supply of high-quality reclaimed water. TIANYI TECH will continue to use its compliant operation and standardized trading capabilities to help customers turn the policy dividends of wastewater resource recovery into tangible cost advantages and environmental performance.

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*Source: Shenzhen Longhua Drainage Co., Ltd., Guide for Reclaimed Wastewater Supply Management group standard (2026-08-01); industry data compiled from public reports.*

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