Ma Shijun, Lei Tianyang, Meng Jing, Liang Xi, Guan Dabo
Department of Earth System Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100080, China.
The Barlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Innovation (Camb). 2022 Dec 8;4(1):100361. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100361. eCollection 2023 Jan 30.
The refining industry is the third-largest source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources, so it is at the forefront of the energy transition and net zero pathways. The dynamics of contributors in this sector such as crucial countries, leading enterprises, and key emission processes are vital to identifying key GHG emitters and supporting targeted emission reduction, yet they are still poorly understood. Here, we established a global sub-refinery GHG emission dataset in a long time series based on life cycle method. Globally, cumulative GHG emissions from refineries reached approximately 34.1 gigatons (Gt) in the period 2000-2021 with an average annual increasing rate of 0.7%, dominated by the United States, EU27&UK, and China. In 2021, the top 20 countries with the largest GHG emissions of oil refining accounted for 83.9% of global emissions from refineries, compared with 79.5% in 2000. Moreover, over the past two decades, 53.9-57.0% of total GHG emissions came from the top 20 oil refining enterprises with the largest GHG emissions in 12 of these 20 countries. Retiring or installing mitigation technologies in the top 20% of refineries with the largest GHG emissions and refineries with GHG emissions of more than 0.1 Gt will reduce the level of GHG emissions by 38.0%-100.0% in these enterprises. Specifically, low-carbon technologies installed on furnaces and boilers as well as steam methane reforming will enable substantial GHG mitigation of more than 54.0% at the refining unit level. Therefore, our results suggest that policies targeting a relatively small number of super-emission contributors could significantly reduce GHG emissions from global oil refining.
炼油行业是全球固定源温室气体（GHG）排放的第三大来源，因此处于能源转型和净零排放路径的前沿。该行业中关键国家、领先企业和关键排放过程等贡献者的动态对于识别主要温室气体排放者和支持有针对性的减排至关重要，但目前仍了解不足。在此，我们基于生命周期方法建立了一个长期时间序列的全球炼油厂温室气体排放数据集。在全球范围内，2000 - 2021年期间炼油厂的累计温室气体排放量达到约341亿吨（Gt），年均增长率为0.7%，主要由美国、欧盟27国及英国和中国主导。2021年，炼油温室气体排放量最大的前20个国家占全球炼油厂排放量的83.9%，而2000年这一比例为79.5%。此外，在过去二十年中，20个国家中有12个国家温室气体排放总量的53.9% - 57.0%来自温室气体排放量最大的前20家炼油企业。在温室气体排放量最大的前20%的炼油厂以及温室气体排放量超过0.1 Gt的炼油厂中淘汰或安装减排技术，将使这些企业的温室气体排放水平降低38.0% - 100.0%。具体而言，在熔炉、锅炉以及蒸汽甲烷重整装置上安装低碳技术，将在炼油装置层面实现超过54.0%的显著温室气体减排。因此，我们的结果表明，针对相对少数超级排放贡献者的政策可以显著减少全球炼油行业的温室气体排放。
