Based on the principle of the "polluter pays," the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced the "Air Pollution Control Fee Collection Regulations" in 1995 as authorized on the basis of Article 16, Paragraph 2 of the Air Pollution Control Act Article, and formally initiated an air pollution control feecollection system in July 1995. In order to further expand air pollution reduction incentives and comply with the principle of placing a fair burden on pollution sources, the EPA has implemented a second stage of air pollution control fee collection starting in July 1998. To facilitate reporting and fee payment by companies, the EPA has gradually instituted a range of convenient online reporting and fee collection services, has established central government and local government management and implementation frameworks, and established a unified, dedicated service window. The EPA can conveniently accept companies' reports and provide consulting near at hand, which has effectively reduce the problem of redundant reporting of stationary pollution source data, and enabling the collection system to function smoothly.
To ensure the effectiveness of stationary pollution source air pollution control fee pollution management and assessment, and enhance emissions data management performance, we have emphasized the following chief aspects during the year: 1. Management of emissions volume trends; enhancing value-added use of data; 2. Implementation of external audits and establishment of source control audit and inspection mechanisms; 3. Implementation of account checking work to ensure that the amount to be collected can be accurately determined; 4. Strengthening reporting and review platform functions and online information security mechanisms.
With regard to the management of emissions volume, we have strengthened environmental authorities' control mechanisms for stationary pollution sources that are subject to air pollution control fees, expanded lateral checking and comparison categories, provided focal verification targets to environmental protection bureaus for audit and confirmation, and successfully added targets that have established hook-ups but are not yet subject to regulatory control. In addition, we have regularly integrated pollution emissions volumes, managed companies' actual emissions, and transmitted emissions data to the EPA's website platform in order to realize information sharing.
With regard to supervisory and inspection mechanisms, to ensure high data quality, we regularly check the integrity, legal consistency, and numerical reasonableness of fields in the air pollution control fee database. In accordance with the results of checking, we have implemented 114 documentary inspections of local environmental protection bureau air pollution control fee report review quality, conducted on-site audit and guidance visits at 20 companies, and completed a communications platform for materials supply chain audit task sharing, which has allowed the audit and comparison of materials supply chain information spanning different cities and counties, and has improved data quality and content correctness.
To ensure the correctness of air pollution control fee accounting items, we completed filing, compilation, and audit tasks for four quarterly report item documents, for which a CPA issued an attestation report. Furthermore, in order to effectively manage overdue air pollution control fee collection work, we assisted with the drafting of the "Stationary Pollution Source Air Pollution Control Fee Overdue Claim Collection Operating Procedures," which will provide standardized reference operating procedures.
With regard to the strengthening of system management performance, in response to the promotion of an integrated management system, we completed establishment of an emissions volume application and review system and integrated hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) query functions this year, and also developed a pollutant type control interface providing automatic checking report results, which will facilitate competent authorities' real-time management of companies' data reports within their areas of jurisdiction. We additionally continued to strengthen security management of database software facilities in order to safeguard the system's information security.
We relied on our air pollution control fee collection database to compile detailed records of the activity intensities, quantification methods, control equipment, emissions data, and collected fees for polluting processes. In order to fulfill our management responsibilities, we used big data analysis of data from heterogeneous data sources in different systems to compare and verify on-site pollution source checking results during the year, which has boosted data quality and reliability; We sincerely believe that the content of our data will provide great assistance to the implementation of the "total emissions control policy" and "air quality improvement maintenance plans," and will also help the central competent authority in drafting policy directions and reduction strategies.
