Zhang Tao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Achieving carbon neutrality is inseparable from new quality productivity
At the 2024 Zhongguancun Forum - Global Science and Technology Innovation High-end Think Tank Forum, Zhang Tao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed that in today's extremely unbalanced carbon emissions and carbon absorption, new quality productivity is an important support for achieving carbon neutrality, and China urgently needs to build a new energy system to achieve low-carbon and zero-carbon reengineering at the end of the industrial process.
Zhang Tao said that China's carbon emissions are about 10 billion tons per year, mainly from energy production, which is 4.5 billion tons; followed by industrial production at 3.9 billion tons; Again, transportation, construction, etc., at 1.5 billion tons. However, China's ecosystem carbon sequestration and industrial carbon sequestration capacity is far less than the 10 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, which shows that carbon emissions and absorption are extremely unbalanced, and transformative technologies are urgently needed to address the carbon imbalance.
How can this be achieved?" We need to rely on new quality productivity to ensure carbon peak and carbon neutrality. China is a huge country, and no single energy source can support its development, so it must build a new energy system to achieve green, low-carbon and multi-energy integration, including fossil energy. Second, we need to develop a new type of digital intelligent industry coupling, improve efficiency through the digitalization and intelligence of the energy industry, and maintain flexibility, controllable technology, safety and efficiency. Zhang Tao said.
On the industrial process side, new technologies are needed to support its low-carbon and zero-carbon reengineering. Zhang Tao pointed out that "high-energy-consuming industries such as chemical industry are large industrial energy consumers and carbon emitters, and are typical industries that are difficult to save energy and reduce emissions, and must carry out low-carbon and zero-carbon reengineering of existing industrial processes." ”
To this end, Zhang Tao proposed two plans: deep electrification and carbon reduction with the help of a multi-energy integration platform. "With the development of renewable energy in China, the electricity market will shift more towards green power, and deep electrification will help support industrial process reengineering," he said. For difficult electrification processes, multi-energy fusion platforms such as green hydrogen, syngas/methanol and carbon dioxide can be used to achieve low-carbon and zero-carbon process reengineering. ”
For the petrochemical industry, Zhang Tao gave a carbon reduction strategy based on the above principles. The first is tempering fusion, that is, the fusion of steel and chemical industry, and the synthesis of ethanol from steel mill exhaust gas. He pointed out that the exhaust gas of steel mills across the country can produce 10 million tons of ethanol, which can not only solve the problem of "competing with the people for food", but also reduce carbon dioxide emissions of steel mills by nearly 20 million tons. The second is near-zero carbon alcohol-to-olefin MTO, that is, green hydrogen fusion coal to olefin carbon reduction. He said that the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has mastered the relevant technology to reduce the most carbon dioxide emissions in the water and gas reaction through the introduction of green hydrogen, reducing the amount of coal consumption by nearly 50% and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 69.3%.
