China releases new regulation on environmental information disclosure

On December 21, 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China released the “Measures on the Management of Environmental Information Disclosure for Companies.” The regulation will come into force on February 8, 2022, and at the same time, the current “Measures on Environmental Information Disclosure for Companies” (Ministry of Ecology and Environment Order No.31) will be abolished.

The measure is applied to key pollutant emission sources and companies that are required for clean production audit. They must disclosure the following information:

• Basic information of the enterprise, including information related to production and ecology and environment protection.
• Environmental management information, such as the ecological environment administrative license, environmental protection tax, environmental pollution liability insurance, environmental protection credit evaluation.
• Pollutant generation, including the pollutant treatment facilities, pollutant discharge, discharge of toxic and hazardous substances, generation, storage, transfer destination, utilization, disposal of the industrial solid waste and hazardous waste, and self-monitoring.
• Carbon emission, including emission amount, emission facilities, etc.
• Ecological and environmental emergency information, including contingency plans against environmental emergencies, and emergency response to heavy air pollution.
• Ecological and environmental violations.
• Temporary environmental information disclosure for current year.
• Other environmental information according to related laws and regulations.

In addition to the above information, enterprises that are required for clean production audit should also disclose the following information.

• Reasons for conducting compulsory clean production audit.
• The implementation, evaluation and acceptance check results of the compulsory clean production audit.

If the enterprise does not disclose environmental information according to this measure, or disclose the false information, the ecological and environment department at or above the city level with districts can order correction and impose a fine of up to RMB 100,000.

For the original text of the above regulation, please refer to the following URL (in simplified Chinese).
https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk02/202112/t20211221_964837.html