On October 26, The State Council issued the Action Plan for achieving carbon peak by 2030 (hereinafter referred to as the Plan), which focuses on the goal of achieving carbon peak by 2030 and makes overall arrangements for promoting the work of achieving carbon peak by 2030. On October 24, the CPC Central Committee and The State Council issued the "Opinions on Fully, Accurately and Comprehensively Implementing the new development Concept to achieve carbon peak neutrality". On October 21, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and other five departments jointly issued "Several Opinions on Strict Energy Efficiency constraints to Promote energy conservation and carbon Reduction in Key Sectors", and specifically issued "Action Plan for Strict Energy Efficiency Constraints to Promote Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction in Key Sectors of petrochemical and chemical Industries (2021 ~ 2025)" for the petrochemical and chemical industry... Recently, there have been frequent policies on carbon peaking, carbon neutralization and carbon reduction, which represents China's firm determination to strike the "30·60 dual-carbon" target.

"The petrochemical industry is not only the problem maker, but also the problem solver." Zhao Zhiping, deputy Party secretary and deputy secretary-general of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said firmly.

To meet the challenge of carbon peak actively

What does peaking and carbon neutrality mean for businesses? Chao Qingchen, deputy director of the National Climate Center, said that under the "two-carbon" goal, China's economic development model, energy structure, technology path, production and consumption mode will undergo profound changes. Enterprises must transform as soon as possible if they want to develop, and the transformation process will contain huge market opportunities. In order to achieve the emission reduction target, governments and relevant regulatory agencies will introduce policies and measures, which will affect the production and operation of enterprises, especially those with high emissions and high energy consumption. In the process of low-carbon transformation, enterprises are also faced with the uncertainty brought by technological change. If enterprises master some key core technologies, they can greatly enhance their competitive advantages and improve their leading position in the industry; otherwise, they may be eliminated.

As a matter of fact, the task of carbon reduction in various industries has become very urgent. The petroleum and chemical industries are also faced with difficulties in emission reduction, accounting difficulties and technical bottlenecks.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2019, direct carbon dioxide emissions from the production and use of chemicals and waste disposal were 1.6 billion tons, while indirect emissions were 600 million tons, accounting for 6% of the global total. Zhang Zhiqiang, director of the International Cooperation and Exchange Department of the National Climate Strategy Center, said: "Globally, the chemical industry accounts for a small proportion of carbon emissions, but it is difficult to reduce emissions, because it directly involves coal, oil and natural gas and other basic energy sources. At the same time, it is difficult to calculate the carbon emissions generated by chemical reactions. Among them, the coal industry is more difficult to reduce emissions, because coal consumption accounts for 58% of energy consumption, formaldehyde, synthetic ammonia, coal to oil and other coal chemical products emission intensity, production process carbon emission concentration is high, is the focus of emission reduction."

Zhang Zheng, a partner of Siemens Aiwendar Consulting, said that if the 30·60 target is to be achieved, the four dimensions covering the whole life cycle of carbon source, carbon application, carbon emission and carbon trading face great challenges. Firstly, from the perspective of carbon source, coal power enterprises will face a greater risk of extrusion of renewable energy, and the unstable operation of renewable energy may cause certain operation risks to the power grid. The application of hydrogen energy and energy storage is also less than expected. The second is the dimension of carbon emission. The application of carbon dioxide capture technology requires a large amount of investment in research. The key path of carbon capture popularization and application in various fields is still in the early stage of development, and there is the possibility that the technology development will not be as expected in the future. The third is the carbon application dimension. Under the short-term emission reduction pressure, some high-carbon industries will suffer from the short-term capacity compression and the steady rise of carbon price, which will lead to the increase of the operation cost of high-carbon emission enterprises and the increase of the investment of terminal electrification transformation enterprises. The fourth is the carbon trading dimension. The trading mechanism has just been established and needs to be further systematized, platformized and marketized.

Reducing carbon has the potential to play an important role in the petrochemical industry

For chemical industry, the national policy brings not only the challenge of carbon reduction, but also the opportunity of development. Li Yongliang, deputy director of industrial development Department of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, pointed out that the future development of the chemical industry, must be carbon peak throughout the whole process and all aspects of economic and social development, focus on the implementation of green and low-carbon energy transformation, energy saving and carbon reduction and efficiency, circular economy to help reduce carbon and other actions, will strictly control energy intensity and reasonable control of the total amount of combined, the implementation of energy budget, Establish a unified and standardized carbon emission calculation system.

Li Yongliang introduced that among the ten actions to achieve the carbon peak, the petrochemical industry is mainly involved in the energy green low-carbon transformation action, energy conservation, carbon reduction and efficiency action, industrial carbon peak action, circular economy to help reduce carbon and green low-carbon technology innovation action. Among them, the action on energy conservation, carbon reduction and efficiency refers to strictly controlling the intensity of energy consumption, rationally controlling the total amount of energy, implementing energy budget management, and strengthening the review of energy conservation of fixed investment projects. The Carbon Peak Action in the industrial sector proposed strict project access, steady and orderly development of modern coal chemical industry, promoting the light quality of petrochemical and chemical raw materials, encouraging enterprises to save energy, upgrade, promote clean use of energy, material recycling; Green low-carbon scientific and technological innovation actions include large-scale use of renewable energy, energy conservation, hydrogen energy, energy storage, power batteries, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), and other topics are the future focus.

As for the future development direction of the industry, Zhang Zhiqiang mentioned that high-carbon chemical fuels will certainly not be developed for a long time. In the next step, the petrochemical industry should develop efficient fuels on the one hand, and at the same time transform from fuels to materials. On the other hand, intelligent technology should be adopted to recycle energy and materials.

Enterprises early layout to seize the commanding heights of low-carbon development

Under the background of "double carbon", chemical enterprises are also laying out in advance, taking the initiative in development and stepping on the road of green, low-carbon and high-quality development.

Zhong Ren, deputy general manager of Sinochem Holdings Co., LTD., introduced that in order to practice the "double carbon" goal, the company accelerated the transformation of smart refinery, realized the optimization of refinery resource allocation through the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other new technologies, as well as the full life cycle management of equipment, energy, production and sales, promoted the refinery operation and management to be refined, and the safety and environmental protection forecasting and early warning. To minimize the operation cost and material consumption cost of the whole plant and maximize the comprehensive value of products, further strengthen the statistics and monitoring of energy consumption of the refinery, implement measures of energy saving, water saving, emission reduction and recycling, and carry out the green and low-carbon concept throughout the whole system and whole process of production and operation, so as to achieve the double reduction of energy consumption and carbon emission of the refinery.

Sinopec Ningbo Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Co., Ltd. accelerated the layout of hydrogen energy business and built the first hydrogenation demonstration station in Ningbo City. They actively track the development of new technology, combined with the surrounding enterprises, brother enterprises practice cases, research joint venture coastal photovoltaic belt, offshore wind power generation green hydrogen, as well as efficient production of agricultural applications and other projects feasibility, and timely start the study of the existing high concentration CO₂ storage and transport technology, for the near oilfield to provide CO₂ for oil flooding.

Chao Qingchen said that under the background of global carbon neutrality, enterprises must plan green and low-carbon transformation as early as possible to avoid transformation risks. Enterprises are the main force in the implementation of the goal of carbon peak carbon neutrality, and policy, technology and capital are three important aspects to realize the transformation. First, enterprise management should improve scientific understanding and policy judgment, grasp the opportunity period of transformation, grasp information, and avoid regulatory legal, reputation, financial and other risks. Second, seek new business opportunities through technological innovation such as upgrading and innovation, green and low-carbon transformation, and digital informatization. Third, in view of the increasing requirements of information disclosure and carbon asset management, establish and improve the relevant system of enterprises. Many large international companies have taken action, and some domestic companies have also made a lot of exploration in the development of digital, networked and intelligent energy.

Zhou Elubo, vice president and chief technology officer of Honeywell Characteristic Materials and Technology Group Asia Pacific, said that for the refining and chemical industry, low-carbon development starts from raw materials. It can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by using renewable resources and recycled materials, and increase raw material utilization efficiency by further utilization of crude oil and light carbonization of petrochemical materials. At the same time, we should attach importance to the combination of molecular management technology to improve the conversion rate of hydrocarbon and attach importance to the application of green hydrogen, which can open up a low-carbon development road for the green development of refining and chemical industry.

According to Li Tao, Asia Pacific Strategic Marketing Director of Huntsman Polyurethane, Huntsman has actively carried out the carbon reduction path project in the polyurethane industry with the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences, which will jointly study the carbon footprint assessment of the whole life cycle of polyurethane raw material production, system material production, product production and product application scenarios. Complete carbon assessment and carbon accounting of 3 typical polyurethane products.

CCUS is one of the key technologies to deal with global climate change. Shao Yaofeng, sales director of energy solutions Business of Dow (China) Investment Co., LTD., Asia Pacific Region, pointed out that the biggest change and difficulty in the development of carbon capture technology is the combination of carbon capture and emission reduction, and how to upgrade or reform the original carbon capture-release technology into capture-sequestration - supercharging/utilization technology, so as to achieve carbon reduction in the whole process of production.

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