Navigating environmental complexities at pace
Revamping existing hydrogen plants can provide a significant and lasting impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions towards net zero
T oday’s energy and fuel market is uncertain and vola- tile. Balancing the need to reduce fossil fuel use and meet climate targets while ensuring energy security and fuel supply is a complex task. Long-term, fossil fuel use will decline and be substituted by renewable fuels, such as green H₂, e-fuels, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). 1 Energy produced from renewables is projected to be 50% by 2030, rising to 85% by 2050. However, the path through the energy transition is less clear, and renewable-produced energy is not enough to reach net zero targets and limit global warming to 1.5ºC. With pressure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emis - sions, progress towards GHG reduction targets and goals will become increasingly scrutinised by investors, custom- ers, and other stakeholders. This level of scrutiny adds pressure to demonstrate concrete actions and plans to tackle emissions. Carbon pricing mechanisms and policies in regions like Europe provide motivation to tackle existing CO₂ emissions, while instruments such as carbon border taxes will offer incentives to producers in regions without domestic pricing to reduce GHG emissions. Innovation will create new technology options that enable hard-to-abate industries like refining to hit their net zero targets in 2050. However, as these developing technolo- gies take time to demonstrate, scale up, and deploy, reduc- ing GHG emissions to meet 2030 commitments will rely on using existing technology and solutions applied to existing fossil fuel-based production.¹ Ken Chlapik, Dominic Winch and Chris Murkin Johnson Matthey
Decarbonisation requires navigating a complex set of choices that balance technical and financial feasibility while ensuring a genuine, measurable climate benefit. However, assuming funding and incentives are available, and tech- nology risk can be minimised using existing technology, the next challenge will become one of scale and number, mov- ing from small demonstration projects and on to executing enough ‘velocity’ to decarbonise the installed asset base of over 700 refineries.2 Navigating refinery decarbonisation Figure 1 shows the many routes to reduce GHG emissions from fossil fuel use across a refinery. Initial gains are likely to come from low investment energy efficiency and pro - cess improvements that save energy and reduce fuel usage. However, easily attainable efficiency gains in some markets have already been realised but making significant GHG emis - sions improvements requires substantial capital investment. These investments could be focused on either replacing fossil fuels in a process or facility or reducing emissions coming out of the process, or a mix of the two, as illustrated in Figure 1. Replacing fossil carbon could be done through adopting biofuels, renewable energy, and electrification, or fuels created through green hydrogen or green hydrogen and captured CO₂. There will ultimately be limitations to the availability of renewable energy or biomass and bio-feeds, which are already commonly utilised for blending into fuels. Growing biofuel supply by 2030 will rely on newer,
Carbon minim a lisation
Partial electri cation Increased e ciency Process adjustments
Existing asset revamp
Carbon capture
New blue H plant/ blue H as re nery fuel
Grassroots fuel/feed replacement
Geological storage Mineralisation
Carbon reduction
Storage
Decarbonise
Carbon capture
Source of CO for: E-fuels Chemicals
Electric reforming Electric heating
Carbon replacement
Utilisation
Electri cation
Biomass Biofuels
Bio-feeds
Renewable feedstock
Green H E-fuels
Non-bio routes
Figure 1 Illustration of different options available to refineries towards decarbonisation of their existing assets and processes
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PTQ Q4 2022
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