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Nowadays, environmental credit evaluation has been widely used in green finance, market supervision, price adjustment and other fields, and has become a green business card and green power on the road of enterprise development. Those who keep promises "get benefits and reduce pressure" and enjoy better administrative services, financing services, public services and lower market costs.
□ Our reporter Zhang Wei
As a "ruler" of environmental supervision, environmental credit evaluation plays an increasingly prominent role.
Earlier this year, the general offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued the Opinions on Promoting the Construction of Social Credit System with High Quality and Promoting the Formation of a New Development Pattern (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), clearly proposing to improve the eco-environmental credit system. Fully implement credit evaluation in the fields of environmental protection, soil and water conservation, and strengthen the sharing and application of credit evaluation results.
From the end of 2013, the "Measures for Enterprise Environmental Credit Evaluation (Trial)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") was launched, China’s environmental credit construction has gone through nearly ten years and achieved positive results. All localities are actively exploring the environmental credit supervision mode, and have formed a number of institutional innovations and practical innovations that can be replicated and popularized.
5 colors to distinguish enterprise credit
Green, blue, yellow, red and black have special significance in the field of ecological environment in Jiangsu Province.
They are signs that distinguish the environmental credit rating of enterprises. Enterprises with higher environmental credit rating can enjoy lower-priced credit, water and electricity resources and more reputation resources.
A construction company in Jiangsu was extremely impressed by this logo. In March, 2021, the company’s A-zone project was subjected to two administrative penalties by the Nanjing Bureau of Ecology and Environment for unapproved night construction. In April of the same year, another project in Area B of the company was also complained by the masses because of noise disturbance caused by unapproved night construction, and was again subject to administrative punishment. According to the Measures for Environmental Protection Credit Evaluation of Enterprises and Institutions in Jiangsu Province, this company’s environmental protection credit rating was rated as red, belonging to an environmental protection untrustworthy enterprise. The evaluation results were pushed by the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment to the Jiangsu Banking Insurance Regulatory Bureau and other departments and the provincial public credit information platform. Subsequently, financial institutions implemented a differentiated credit policy for the company according to the environmental credit rating, and the company’s loans were limited because of environmental dishonesty.
Credit punishment is like a sword, which makes the enterprise feel the pain: the company is not only listed as the key monitoring object by the Nanjing ecological environment department, but also urged and restricted by many banks, and during the publicity period of administrative punishment, it cannot participate in government procurement and project bidding, facing the risk of capital chain breakage and huge operating pressure.
After learning from a painful experience, the company took the initiative to communicate with the ecological environment department of Nanjing, actively applied for credit repair, and timely fed back the rectification situation. The company organizes all employees to study environmental protection laws and regulations, and strengthens the education of employees’ law-abiding behavior and integrity awareness in the construction process in an all-round way. In each construction site, the monitoring and management of the construction site will be strengthened in accordance with various ecological and environmental protection standards. Strictly implement the examination and approval procedures for night construction, and dare not touch the legal red line again.
In October, 2021, the company did not commit any environmental violations, the publicity of administrative punishment expired, the environmental protection credit was restored, the loan limit with a total amount of nearly 1 billion yuan was restored, the capital chain risk was solved, and the business operation was back on the right track.
According to statistics, by the end of 2021, the loan balance of major banking institutions in Jiangsu Province to enterprises participating in environmental credit evaluation was 1.99 trillion yuan, an increase of 802.3 billion yuan over the end of last year. Among them, the balance of loans to green and blue enterprises totaled 1.98 trillion yuan, accounting for 99.25%, an increase of 800.7 billion yuan over the end of last year. Measures were taken to urge the red and black enterprises to rectify, compress and withdraw, and collect and dispose of them, involving a total loan balance of 3.7 billion yuan, accounting for only 0.19% of the balance.
Evaluation of enterprises exceeds 740,000 (times)
"The social credit system can play a great role in the field of ecological protection." Li Zhiyong, a professor at the School of Finance of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, said.
In Li Zhiyong’s view, eco-environmental credit is an important part of the construction of social credit system. Perfecting the eco-environmental credit system will promote the mutual promotion between the credit system and green development, improve the standard system and evaluation mechanism of green finance, help the high-quality construction and development of China’s modern economic system, and make important contributions to China’s goal of achieving peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality.
As early as the end of 2013, the Measures had incorporated 21 indicators from four aspects: pollution prevention, ecological protection, environmental management and social supervision into the evaluation system, and conducted environmental credit evaluation for enterprises with large total pollutant discharge, high environmental risks and great impact on the ecological environment, and classified management for enterprises with good environmental integrity, good warning and bad environmental protection.
The national unified environmental impact assessment credit platform was launched in November 2019.
At present, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China have carried out environmental credit evaluation to varying degrees. From 2013 to 2021, according to the incomplete statistics of 12 provinces (cities) in Hebei, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Hunan, Guangdong, Chongqing and Sichuan, more than 740,000 enterprises have been evaluated.
On this basis, all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) explore and innovate environmental credit evaluation indicators with local characteristics in combination with local characteristics and practical work practice. For example, the total score of Zhejiang enterprises’ environmental credit evaluation is 1000 points, including three first-level indicators such as environmental compliance (300 points), environmental management and ecological protection (300 points) and social responsibility (400 points), and several second-level indicators are set under each first-level indicator; Gansu puts enterprise environmental protection standardization construction and enterprise environmental protection credit evaluation in the same framework, and adopts a 500-point scoring method. The indicators cover five categories, 27 items and 122 specific requirements, including the implementation of the main responsibility of environmental protection and the operation and management of pollution control facilities. Liaoning, Jiangsu, Hunan, Guangxi and other places adopt the environmental behavior scoring system for evaluation, and make corresponding scores based on the deduction or bonus indicators on the basis of the initial scores.
"Although the evaluation criteria are quite different in different places, their contents basically cover the environmental behavior of enterprises in pollution prevention, ecological protection, environmental management, social supervision and other aspects. If enterprises want to obtain better environmental credit evaluation results, they need to effectively improve their environmental behavior against environmental credit evaluation indicators, improve the level of pollution control, and strictly abide by ecological environment laws and regulations." Li Xuan, an associate researcher at the Center for Environmental and Economic Policy Research of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said.
Promote credit classification and supervision
Nowadays, environmental credit evaluation has been widely used in green finance, market supervision, price adjustment and other fields. In Li Xuan’s words, environmental credit evaluation has become a green business card and green driving force on the road of enterprise development, and trustworthy people "get benefits and reduce pressure" and enjoy better administrative services, financing services, public services and lower market costs.
"Because our company has a good environmental credit, we quickly got a radiation safety license and the project was put into operation at the fastest speed." The relevant person in charge of Huzhou Southern Logistics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Southern Logistics) said.
In Zhejiang, environmental protection credit has really brought benefits to trustworthy enterprises. Enterprises with good credit rating can get active support and give priority in various ecological environmental protection licensing matters, special funds distribution, scientific and technological project establishment, and evaluation and award activities. Southern logistics is one of the beneficiaries. In 2021, Southern Logistics plans to use the X-ray flaw detection device for steel cord of mining conveyor belt at the tail of 5# conveyor from Changxing Cement in Meishan Town to Xiaopu Town Wharf, and it needs to apply for radiation safety license. After receiving the application materials of the enterprise, the staff of Huzhou Eco-environment Bureau checked the credit of the enterprise through the credit platform, and the platform showed that the enterprise had a good credit rating and could enjoy the green channel for approval. Therefore, the staff of Huzhou Eco-environment Bureau completed the acceptance and review as quickly as possible, and the matters originally promised to be handled within 8 working days were completed within 2 working days, saving 75% of the examination and approval time.
It is worth mentioning that Zhejiang is also actively promoting a new model of cross-regional and cross-departmental environmental credit supervision. Since 2020, the Department of Ecology and Environment of Zhejiang Province has taken the lead in jointly issuing the Memorandum of Cooperation on Implementing Credit Joint Reward and Punishment in the Ecological Environment of the Yangtze River Delta Region (2020 Edition) with the credit departments of Zhejiang Province, Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province and Shanghai Municipality, so as to promote the integrated management of environmental credit in the Yangtze River Delta region.
In promoting the sharing of credit information and mutual recognition of results, a sharing and pushing mechanism of environmental credit evaluation results in the Yangtze River Delta region was established, and based on the unified social credit code, environmental credit information such as administrative license, administrative punishment, environmental credit evaluation results, and the results of serious dishonesty list were pushed to the "credit Yangtze River Delta" platform to realize the collection and sharing of credit information in the ecological environment field. Since 2020, three provinces and one city have announced a total of 264 seriously untrustworthy enterprises on the "credit Yangtze River Delta" platform, providing support for cross-regional credit joint rewards and punishments in the ecological environment field.
In the future, it will be inevitable to promote credit classification supervision in the field of ecological environment protection, optimize the allocation of supervision resources based on credit risk, and improve the accuracy and effectiveness of supervision, which is also an important content clearly defined in the Opinions.
Xue Fang, deputy secretary-general of Beijing Credit Association and researcher of Credit Legislation and Credit Evaluation Research Center of Capital Normal University, said that at present, China has 150 million market players, making it the largest market player in the world. Faced with such a large number of market players, the traditional supervision mechanism focusing on inspections has obviously failed to meet the needs of development. Promoting credit classification supervision in key areas such as eco-environmental protection is to quantify and classify the eco-environmental risk management indicators of enterprises through highly developed digital technology and drawing lessons from the operational logic of commercial rating mechanism, and accurately depict the "credit risk portrait" of enterprises. The regulatory authorities can take targeted regulatory measures according to the credit risk status of enterprises. For high-risk enterprises, high-risk fields and high-risk problems, more regulatory resources can be allocated. For low-risk enterprises, a more relaxed and flexible supervision method can be adopted. Thus, accurate supervision, key supervision, source supervision and credit supervision can be realized more effectively.
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