China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) has established strategic cooperation with three top institutions, to take lead in a joint research on the energy and chemical industry’s carbon emissions peak and carbon neutral. Sinopec invited thought leaders and experts in the fields of climate change, energy and chemical industry to conduct in-depth research on the strategic path of having CO2 emissions peak and achieve carbon neutral before 2030 following China’s action plan.
Zhang Yuzhuo, a research fellow and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chairman of the board of Sinopec, noted that achieving the goal of reaching the CO2 emissions peak and going carbon neutral is both a great responsibility and profound revolution for the energy and chemical industry. He said, “Sinopec will focus on green and low-carbon development from a strategic and overall perspective and move towards the goal of achieving ‘net-zero’ unswervingly, the company will follow the trends of global energy reform and general industrial development to study and determine its own strategic goals, key tasks, implementation approaches and guarantee mechanism. Sinopec will also strengthen the communication and exchanges with government departments and industry associations to better serve and support national and industry-related decisions.”
In recent years, Sinopec has promoted its green and low-carbon development tactic for the corporate development strategy, actively control its greenhouse gas emissions to achieve significant carbon emissions results. In the area of clean energy development, Sinopec has expanded its construction of natural gas production capacity and promoted the development of new energy resources such as biomass energy and geothermal energy, while driving forward the development and utilization of hydrogen energy.
To strengthen the company’s energy-saving management, Sinopec implements an ‘energy efficiency improvement’ plan that accelerates industrial structure adjustment to phase out the outdated production capacity. And in terms of greenhouse gas recovery and utilization, Sinopec is focusing on promoting the recovery and utilization of high-concentration CO2 tail gas from refining and chemical enterprises, carrying out CO2 flooding field tests and methane gas release recovery. The carbon trading transaction volume of enterprises participating in the pilot project has reached 11.1 million tons.
Carbon emissions peak refers to the inflection point of total CO2 emission, after which the emissions will begin to decline. The carbon neutral target aims to achieve low-carbon and zero-carbon transformation of energy, realizes zero CO2 emissions, reduce other types of greenhouse gas emissions significantly as well as total man-made greenhouse gas emissions to zero through increasing carbon sinks and artificial negative emission measures.
