1 Introduction
The report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability released by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC, 2022) in 2022 shows that climate change will have negative impacts on most species, and some of the ecological losses caused by climate change are irreversible or nearly irreversible (IPCC, 2022). As the social, economic and ecological environment problems caused by climate change have become more and more serious, the international community also pays more attention to carbon emission reduction. As a large developing country, China has also actively promoted carbon emission reduction and put forward the influential “peaking carbon emissions and carbon neutrality” target, that is, China will strive to reach the peak of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Since then, the Chinese government has issued a series of policy documents to guide and urge all production sectors to reduce carbon emissions. For example, the fourteenth Five-year plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China and the outline of long-term goals for 2035 propose that during the “fourteenth five-year plan” period, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP should be reduced by 13.5% and 18% respectively; The Opinions on Completely, Accurately and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept and Doing a Good Job on carbon peak and carbon neutralization have systematically deployed the carbon peaking and carbon neutralization work (General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, 2021); Action Plan for Carbon Dioxide Peaking Before 2030 clearly requires that the industrial structure and energy structure must be developed in a clean manner, and the energy utilization efficiency of key industries needs to be greatly improved (The State Council Of the People’s Republic of China, 2021). China’s deployment and planning of carbon emission reduction are gradually specific and in-depth.
As a pillar industry of economic development, the chemical industry is a typical industry with high energy consumption, high pollution, and high carbon emissions (Gu et al., 2013). Under the background of low-carbon economic development, the chemical industry is facing great pressure on carbon emission reduction, which also means that the chemical industry has rich potential in carbon emission reduction. The path of carbon emission reduction and achieving carbon neutrality in the chemical industry has become one of the research focuses internationally.
In this paper, Section 2 summarizes research on carbon dioxide emission reduction in chemical industry; Section 3 analyzes the current development status of chemical industry in China; Section 4 identifies major opportunities and challenges for chemical industry in China under the national carbon neutrality goal. Finally, Section 5 discusses paths and policy implications.
2 Manuscript formatting
2.1 Relevant research on carbon emission reduction paths in chemical industry
At present, many scholars have studied the carbon emission reduction measures in chemical industry. In the short term, the main measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal chemical industry are the application of advanced technology and the elimination of backward production capacity. The main measures to reduce carbon emissions in the medium and long term, however, are to promote the transformation of energy structure and to improve of energy efficiency (Huang et al., 2019). At the same time, improving the circularity of resources and promoting value chain collaboration can also reduce carbon emissions (ECF, 2014).
Some studies focus on the comparative analysis of the role of advanced technology on carbon emission reduction in chemical industry. For example, the mixed SD-LEAP model is used to compare the carbon dioxide emissions and emission reduction potential of the South Korea’s oil refining industry under different technology scenarios (Park et al., 2010). Other studies use scenario analysis to examine the impacts of technological improvement on carbon dioxide emission reduction in China’s chemical industry (Zhu et al., 2010). However, some studies have found that the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions brought by technological improvement cannot offset the increase of carbon dioxide caused by scale effect (Liang and Zhang, 2013), while optimizing the energy structure can promote carbon emission reduction (Fan et al., 2013). Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) also has the technical potential to achieve carbon neutrality in the chemical industry, but it will also lead to a massive increase of demand in greenhouse gas emits from low-carbon electricity (Kätelhön et al., 2019), and the technical cost of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is very expensive (The European Chemical Industry Council Cefic, 2013). Griffin et al. (2018) believes that promoting CCS, improving energy efficiency, the use of bioenergy and other key technologies are considered to be the keys to effectively reduce carbon emissions. Gabrielli et al. (2020) evaluated three technology paths (CCS path, CCU path and BIO path (Use of biomass for particular purposes in the production of chemicals)) which can achieve carbon neutrality in the chemical industry in a qualitative and quantitative way and analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of each technology path.
Other studies have discussed the possible ways of emission reduction in the chemical industry from a more comprehensive perspective of project technology management and information management, such as improving project standardization, strengthening the training of professional technicians, and establishing enterprise energy-saving information platform (Wang, 2008). In addition, based on the concept of circular economy, eco-industrial parks can also reduce the carbon emissions from chemical enterprises by realizing rational allocation and efficient utilization of resources (Gao et al., 2009).
2.2 Development status of chemical industry in china
China is one of the largest producers and consumers of chemical products in the world (Lin et al., 2012). Due to the large scale of the chemical industry and a wide range of products, different studies define the scope of the chemical industry differently. Referring to the method of Wei et al (2018), the statistical caliber of the chemical industry in this paper is chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing (except Figure 2). Although the number of enterprises in the chemical industry has remained generally stable since 2011, the assets of the chemical industry have shown an upward trend (Figure 1). By 2020, the number of chemical industry enterprises in China has reached 22,008, with total assets of 7,865.15 billion yuan. According to Figure 2, the growth rate of the added value of China’s chemical industry has been in a downward trend since 2011, falling from 14.8% in 2011 to 3.4% in 2020. In 2021, the growth rate is estimated to be 7.4% (National Development and Reform Commission, 2021).
