Chinese carbon neutral: start with Xiu Xian

Wen | Liu Ye

Edit | Tang Xiaoyuan

Total text: 4985 words

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Carbon dioxide is a climate killer that produces greenhouse effects. It is part of the human "Mars Immigration Program" again-

NASA launched the "Centennial Challenge Plan" in 2018, hoping to use the sufficient carbon dioxide on Mars to synthesize nutrients such as glucose, so that future humans will have energy intake on Mars in the future.

This sound of things that sound out of reach, the Chinese have done it first.

In 2021, the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized carbon dioxide synthetic starch -this is the first time that human beings have achieved carbon dioxide to starch from the beginning, "let starch production transform from traditional agricultural planting model to industrial workshop production models into possible."

According to Zhang Lei, a person in the energy industry, Zhang Lei, CEO of Vision Science and Technology Group, this technology has become a new grain -producing center in China after the future mature in the future. "

According to netizens, "drinking the northwest wind to fill the stomach" will no longer be a joke. Netizens call this technology image "Xiu Xian".

Picture source: Deyun Dou Xiaohe

The "carbon -to -powder powder" technology is more significant when the global high temperature causes the food crisis: it can not only make food in the workshop, but also eliminate carbon dioxide that leads to the global warming.

In May this year, the China Development and Reform Commission will advance carbon dioxide synthesis starch technology to industrialization in the "Fourteenth Five -Year Plan" plan.

Of course, by relying on "Xiu Xian" technology, the Earth people can't eat carbon dioxide. At present, the world's mainstream digestive carbon methods are petroleum mining and geological sealing.

The protagonist of this article is about to appear today- ——

The technology of collecting carbon capture and sealing is called CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage);

If you add application links such as "carbon rotation", it will become carbon capture, utilization, and sealing of carbon (Carbon Capture, Utilizationand Storage).

Fashionable and environmentally friendly Earth people are discussing CCUS. For example, IPCC (Special Committee of the Intergovernmental Climate Change) specifically pointed out in a meeting:

Without CCUS technology, almost all climate models cannot achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement -controlling global temperature growth at 2 ° C.

What's more, human beings can not give up the use of fossil energy at all.

For example, this summer, the natural gas shortage caused by the Russian and Ukraine Conflict and Beixi 1 pipeline maintenance caused the European power grid to collapse: London's electricity price once soared 5,000%; France, which is expensive as a nuclear, could not resist, and electricity prices reached a record high.

Generally speaking, "coal burning coal, gas burning gas, and money burning oil when the power is missing" -This is called power peak. However, in Europe, which is close to 40%of renewable energy power, because wind and light resources are not controlled, they lack the ability of peak regulation.

Austria and Germany have restarted coal power, and many European countries have also begun to buy coal in Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

For China, which is firmly moving towards the "3060" dual carbon target: CCUS is not only a key technology for emission reduction, but also promotes the efficient utilization of fossil energy. Develop CCUS, which is also related to the National Games.

Look at CCUS like this: Martian immigrants can fill the belly; enter can reduce the discharge control carbon, and return oil to increase production -how to blow the benefits is not exaggerated.

However, a bunch of people in the Cube Zhizhi Bureau talked with their eyes: "CCUS, currently a donkey shit egg."

Next you will see:

1. What companies are running for CCUS's trillion tracks?

2. What are the key CCUS projects in China? Which points make it "dislike" by the industry people?

1. Big factories and giants are voting

Among the 2021 "Fortune" magazine selection of "53 companies that change the world", ranking second is China Energy Corporation Vision Technology. In its carbon neutralization operation report, wind power and energy storage are called "new coal". Lithium batteries and hydrogen energy are called "new oil".

The landscape lithium hydrogen storage is a few trillion tracks of the Chinese government's heavy funds and the poverty chase of the enterprise -this super high enthusiasm for the new energy track, a large part of our traditional fossil energy "I'm really scared."

A metaphor of an image is: If the oil field in Saudi Arabia is a complete plate, then the Chinese oil field is thrown the plate on the ground and shattered, kicking a kick and kicking, and then stepped into the stone seam directly.

China's "poor oil" is difficult to survey and minimum. After finally finding a piece of oil field, after finishing the shallow oil, the rest was in the rock cracks.

At this time, carbon dioxide came in handy-CO2-EOR (carbon dioxide reinforcement oil collection) is one of the most common ways to improve oil harvesting. According to the tests of China Shengli Oilfield, Daqing Oilfield, Jilin Oilfield, etc., the output can be increased by 10%to 15%.

The mainstream method of digesting carbon dioxide is oil mining and geological sealing, and they usually refer to one thing.

For example, Canada's WEYBURN is the world's largest and most successful CCUS-reinforcement oil collection project. So far, it has increased a total of 21 million tons of oil and 30 million tons of carbon dioxide.

The United States, which establishes hegemony of "Petroleum+USD", is particularly keen on this technology. 136 of the world's 150 similar projects, accounting for more than 90%of the total global carbon dioxide -driving oil -the United States can import a country from petroleum in 2019 It becomes a net exporter and is inseparable from carbon dioxide. Source of Carbon Capture Project of Coal Power Plant: NRG official website

When a country drives a new energy track, it often goes through three stages:

The first is market creation, the second is technical demonstration, and the third is the application.

In the first stage, we must first find the first beneficiary after creating the market. Based on their investment enthusiasm, we must make a big cake based on their investment enthusiasm -for example, when China is developing lithium batteries, the earliest object of support is lithium battery companies.

The same is true for CCUS. In the multiple links of the industrial chain -the carbon capture, transportation, application and sealing: carbon catcher is upstream, and the use and seal are downstream. The first beneficiary is the oil and gas company that can use carbon -driven oil.

PetroChina and Sinopec have started in 2006 Central Plains Oilfield CO2-EOR-the first CCUS project in China, and have been the main force of the project construction in more than ten years. ,Cooperation.

Cube Zhizhi Bureau sorted out the CCUS project chain-

Drawing: Cube Knowledge Construction Bureau

More and more CCUS "outsiders" have also joined in -for example, Internet and technology companies.

This is because the pace of China's double -carbon is accelerating, and the Internet and technology companies are also under pressure; on the other hand, new energy breaks the high barriers of "only competitiveness with minerals", so that the Internet and energy are not covered with the Internet. The factory can devote the energy industry to love but cannot.

In the "Carbon Neutralization Report" of various Internet factories, we can see that they can achieve two main ways of carbon neutrality:

Method 1: Using control methods, renewable energy, and related decontamination technology investment to enable your own operations and supply chain to achieve decontamberry;

For example, at the operation level, Ali replaced its own short -distance fuel vehicles with new energy vehicles and laid photovoltaic power stations in Cainiao Logistics Park to strive to achieve carbon neutralization of its own operation by 2030;

Method 2: By providing users with low -carbon products or decantilities, indirect points for their carbon neutralization and career. The users here can be individual users, including government and business users.

For example, in terms of decarbon service, Baidu uses AI technology advantages to provide cities with carbon emission monitoring, improve energy use efficiency, and carbon reduction solutions in key industries.

Other large factories may have similar actions, or are implemented through other means, but they must not be able to get rid of these two methods.

In order to save energy and environmental protection, Amazon built the data center in Ning

CCUS technology is wonderful to be able to connect to the middle: large manufacturers can realize their own emission reduction by investing or research and development through carbon capture and carbon applications; on the other hand, they can provide it as the required enterprise.

At present, the large manufacturers who have already moved on CCUS are: Tencent, Huawei, Ali.

Tencent: R & D is preferred, waiting for technology to mature

In 2021 "Green Technology and Carbon neutralization", Tencent sorted out three potential technology routes that solve climate change:

Electrification, hydrogen energy economy, CCUS.

Due to the complicated supply chain, Tencent is expected to be offset by "neutrality" by 2030. To this end, Tencent invested 50 billion yuan to establish a sustainable social value business department and set up a carbon neutralization laboratory to support emerging carbon reduction technology.

Xu Hao, vice president of the department, recognizes that CCUS will become one of the most important technologies to deal with climate change, but at present, due to technical restrictions, industrialization still has difficulty, but after the technical breakthrough and cost reduction in the future, the prospects are still expected.

Huawei: Digital empowerment, layout of electricity first

In the "Global Energy Transformation and Zero Carbon Development White Paper" jointly released by Huawei and Deloitte, CCUS is regarded as the key to manufacturing emission reduction and upgrading and negative carbon technology development and application.

On the other hand, the White Paper also mentioned that digital technology should be applied to zero carbon transformation activities including CCUS -expected by 2030, 15%of global decarbons will be 5G, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and clouds. Wait for digital technology.

Therefore, the first thing that Huawei lay out was: with minimalist sites, computer rooms, and data centers to achieve "zero carbon network" with green electricity. Then it will only carry out digital energy business to provide users with solutions.

Ali: Build a platform to provide carbon reduction services

In March of this year, the "Hangzhou Congress" directly controlled by Ali was established, and the business scope includes all aspects of CCUS -carbon reduction, carbon conversion, carbon capture, carbon sealing technology research and development.

The Cube Zhizhi Bureau believes that Ali chooses to enter the CCUS track directly to integrate this key technology into its "carbon service". In February, Alibaba's "Alibaba Cloud Energy Consumption" is a platform for enterprises to provide measurement, certification, and trading. If CCUS is added, Ali can broaden the service dimension to technical support and further expand the platform ecology.

The CCUS project with oil and gas companies as the main body has initially created the Chinese CCUS market, but the carbon capture capacity of a single project is mostly less than 100,000 tons per year. Ton.

The "China CCUS Annual Report 2021" mentioned that after China achieved carbon neutrality in 2060, CCUS reduced carbon dioxide each year by 10 to 1.82 billion tons -this means that in the next 40 years, the collective amount of carbon catching in China will increase in the next 40 years. Hundreds of times. On the other hand, the large -scale commercialization of CCUS is also indispensable to help Internet technology companies from the side by directly investing or expanding in influence.

However, the return is equally rich -according to the "Global Carbon Capture and Sealing Status 2021", by 2050: Global's investment in carbon catcooking containers can exceed hundreds of trillion US dollars; and China's CCUS output value will reach 330 billion yuan Essence

So the question comes: CCUS seems to be bright in prospects, attracting big factories and giants to enter the game. How can it be a donkey shit egg in the eyes of some people in the industry?

2. Cost tiger mouth, beneficial black hole

The development of China's CCUS has the following three characteristics:

The first is "heavy task", as mentioned earlier: carbon capture must be hundreds of times in the next 40 years to meet the indicators of carbon neutrality;

The second is the "tight time". China's carbon neutralization is limited to 2060, but the time left to CCUS is not so long -after the carbon peak in 2030, the carbon row will show a trend year by year. During the acceleration process, the CCUS development window period is only 8-10 years in the future;

The third is the "large scale". Under the situation of tight time tasks, only the "million -ton" demonstration items that can quickly increase carbon dioxide capture. This will also become the main development method and key investment direction of CCUS.

On January 29 this year, China ’s first million-ton CCUS demonstration project“ Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield ”was officially launched, marking that the domestic CCUS industry began to enter the middle and rear sections of technology demonstration-mature commercial operations. After that, China has 5 million tons of projects.

Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield CCUS Project

The annual sealing 1 million tons of carbon dioxide is equivalent to 9 million trees and nearly 600,000 economy cars for one year, and the efficiency of emission reduction is very significant -but to achieve this goal, two conditions are required:

The first is the "carbon": the independent million -ton project must have a large and stable source of carbon, which requires the requirements for the facilities of the upstream carbon capture device;

The second is money: a project costs tens of millions of billions of costs. In addition, there are daily operating expenses of capture, transportation, and application sealing. According to Qilu Petrochemical forecast, the total cost of three links will not be until 2060 until 2060 years. It is possible to reduce it to the next 100 yuan, and until then, CCUS will become "cheap technology".

Under the double constraints, this is destined to be an area where energy giants are qualified to invest.

But small and medium -sized carbon row facilities are still a key factor that cannot be ignored in "carbon neutrality".

Taking coal power as an example: coal -fired power plants account for half of China's total carbon row, but distributed among more than 1,000 coal power plants in various places, and the highest proportion is small and medium -sized power plants below 2,000 MW. The concentration is very concentrated. Low.

In China, other high -carbon row industries, such as chemicals, steel and cement, are similar to coal power.

These industrial facilities have a huge total carbon row, but:

One single individual quantity cannot support large CCUS projects independently;

Second, because it is too scattered, it cannot be integrated into a large project;

Third, even if it is united, it is impossible to ensure that the application seal is found.

For them, CCUS's beautiful prospects are equal to "donkey shit eggs".

Even if the energy giant leads, it will still face many uncertain factors with sufficient capital and stable carbon source.

Take the "Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield" project, the application method of the downstream of carbon dioxide is to drive oil. However, whether it is profitable, it depends on the price of oil.

According to public data, the project can increase the production of 2.965 million tons of oil in the next fifteen years. According to the current oil price, it is indeed a good business worth 10 billion yuan. However, due to the high cost of catching, transportation, and sealing in daily operations, if the price of oil falls, the entire project may collapse.

Similar situations have appeared in the United States: the world's largest Petranova project with the largest United States and Japan's joint investment of more than $ 1 billion. Due to the low oil prices from 2017 to 2020, and a wave of shocks of the new crown epidemic, in 2021, it was thoroughly thoroughly completed in 2021. Disased.

China also gives response measures: at the carbon capture end of the "Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield" project, it did not use the mainstream coal power plant as the source of carbon, but chose to provide decarburized treatment for industrial hydrogen. The purity of industrial hydrogen that has been decarburized+purified can reach 99.99%, and the annual output is 10 million m³.

Betting on both ends of oil and hydrogen also adds an additional insurance for the future operation of the project.

Another unavoidable crisis is -petroleum reserves.

After the oil or oil field cannot be driven, the upstream is still being produced in the upstream. If the carbon dioxide is not found to be digested, it can only be directly sealed.

For the facilities that are installed with carbon capture, geological sealing does not directly bring benefits. Advanced technologies such as "carbon to powder" still need to be mature; the application of carbon dioxide in the chemical and steel industry is mature, but the cost of carbon is still difficult to get through.

In summary, the current status of CCUS is:

The track that needs to be opened with a lot of money, but faces many uncertain factors in the profit model and application field; the large -scale application is limited, and the small market cannot urge upstream costs.

The only solution is to wait for the maturity and cost of the technology. Prior to this, CCUS will continue to be "disliked".

end

CCUS's "donkey shit egg" crisis is still there.

The construction of the CCUS demonstration project is in full swing: as of 2021, more than 100 CCUS facilities in the world have been added; in China, the Ten million -ton CCUS projects cooperated by the International Energy Giant, Exxon Mobil and CNOOC, and the Guangdong Development and Reform Commission to prepare Investment construction.

At the same time, the United States relying on tax subsidies and the EU's carbon prices forced, trying to drive CCUS's support policies is endless.

But questioning CCUS has not been eliminated because of these actions--

New problems have emerged: Is it really necessary to reproduce huge funds for carbon capture and transformation?

If you continue to trace up the CCUS industry chain, you will find that the key carbon capture end is likely to be a river without source--

Regardless of large, medium, and small carbon row facilities, the best way to reduce carbon reduction from the root is that it is input or switched to new energy.

For example, the cement industry with a global carbon discharge of 8%has contributed the "double carbon" transformation through raw materials replacement, photovoltaic energy storage, and digital means -CCUS is just a preparation option.

On the other hand, carbon emissions that cannot be avoided can also be achieved by planting forests. After all, "green mountains and green mountains are the golden mountains and silver mountains" are the ultimate goal of environmental protection.

But we might as well take a longer look -think about interstellar immigrants and "drinking wind and cultivation", we prefer to see donkey shit eggs tomorrow.

Each platform is the same name, if you like our story, welcome to share, collect, forward, forward

- END -