Urban environmental protection industry is a sunrise industry in today's world. Since the 1990s, countries around the world have paid more and more attention to environmental problems and vigorously promoted clean production technology, and the market scale of environmental protection products and services has become larger and larger. By the end of 2011, the United States accounted for 36% of the global market share in environmental protection, ranking first. Europe ranked second; Japan ranked third.

After decades of development since the 1970s, China's environmental protection industry has begun to take shape. The rapid development of industrialization and urbanization rate has promoted the enhancement of environmental awareness of Chinese residents and the development of environmental protection industry. Especially since the "tenth five-year plan, the state increased for electricity, cement, steel, chemical, light industry and other heavy pollution industry regulation, strengthens the urban sewage, waste and hazardous waste concentrated disposal and other environmental protection infrastructure construction investment, effectively boost the market demand of environmental protection industry, industry overall scale expands rapidly, field development, structure adjustment, step by step The overall level has been greatly improved, and the operation quality and efficiency have been further improved. From the initial "three wastes treatment", it has developed into an industrial system covering environmental protection products, environmental services, clean products and waste recycling, which is cross-industry and cross-region and has basically complete industrial categories.

China's investment in environmental protection during the 11th Five-Year Plan period accounted for about 1.35% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the same period, of which the fiscal expenditure on environmental protection in 2010 was 242.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.4%. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China's investment in environmental protection will reach 3.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 121% compared with the investment during the 11th Five-Year Plan period. In the next five years, the compound growth rate of the industry will be 15%-20%, and it will reach 7%-8% of GDP by 2015. By 2020, environmental protection will become the pillar industry of the national economy.

In the future, the structure of China's environmental protection industry will be further adjusted, and the production of resource-saving products, clean products and comprehensive utilization of resources will continue to develop rapidly. The scale of environmental services will gradually expand. Investment in key areas such as urban sewage treatment, sludge treatment, desulfurization and denitrification will reach 1.2 trillion yuan, boosting the output value of the environmental protection industry by 1.32 trillion yuan.

On October 15, 2015, The State Council issued several Opinions on Promoting the Reform of the Pricing Mechanism, proposing to improve the pricing policy of environmental services. We will make coordinated use of policies on environmental protection taxes, charges and prices for related services, increase economic leverage, and gradually make the expenses borne by enterprises for discharging various pollutants higher than the cost of taking the initiative to control pollution and reduce emissions, so that enterprises are more motivated to take the initiative to control pollution and reduce emissions. In terms of investment in environmental protection, Li Qingrui, director of the department of Regulations of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said publicly that the total investment in China's environmental protection market is expected to reach 17 trillion yuan during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. This will bring huge investment opportunities to the environmental protection market, inject strong development impetus into the environmental protection industry, and become a new round of economic growth point.