In October 2018, the International Energy Agency published a report on the future of the petrochemicals industry, arguing that it was a Cinderella in the global energy futures conversation.
The document was a deliberate attempt on the part of the agency to shine a light into what had become a “blind spot” and barely mentioned by policymakers and politicians pronouncing on the need to phase out fossil fuels production in favour of green energy.
Basically they fall silent when it comes to petrochem substitution. They appear ignorant of its deep importance to modern society.
Nor do they seem aware that petrochem is becoming the largest driver of global demand for oil and gas.
Demand is expected to leap 40% by 2030 and nearly double by 2050. This presents a massive challenge to wholesale energy transition as the production and use of petrochemicals are a major source of pollution.
Finding credible feedstock substitutes including bio is proving tough. In the case of bio, the linchpin issue is the sheer scale of the farming effort and therefore resultant competition for land use.
Carbon fibre and graphene are touted as possible replacements for a suite of products, but will require dramatic upscaling from current production levels.
According to GOPC – Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association – the petrochemicals star is rising; not setting.
It forecasts that the next 20 years may see the chemicals industry rise to greater prominence than ever as decarbonisation reshapes the oil market.
In the transport sector alone, GOPC expects the energy transition to displace 7.5million barrels of liquids per day, that overall demand is likely to plateau soon then fall by 2040.
Transport, already undergoing major energy usage upheavals is expected to carry on shifting away from oil to cleaner energy sources.
However, GOPC says that demand for petrochemicals feedstocks is currently growing four times faster than global oil demand measured between 2019 and 2030.
As a result, feedstocks production will effectively become the dominant driver of oil demand post 2030.
Leaving aside the political machine, one wonders how clued-up NGOs are. For example, whether the Just Stop Oil has any idea of the scale of the petrochemicals industry and the challenges facing companies trying to find credible substitutes to oil (and gas).
Personally, I rather doubt it. And if that is the case, then they will also be unaware of the growing effort being made to identify ways of recycling everyday materials that threaten to overwhelm us all.
Chemicals recycling is attracting the most significant interest. An array of technologies have been developed to break down hard-to-recycle polymers into new forms of plastic or high-quality feedstock, using depolymerisation; pyrolysis; or super-heating to produce syngas.
Plastic-to-plastic (P2P) and plastic-to-feedstock (P2F) recycling opens the door to make more polymer types economically recyclable. It’s not impossible that chemical recycling could double the level of plastic packaging that is recycled (which currently sits at around 20%).
And, very recently, wind turbine manufacturer Vestas via the CETEC initiative has had found a way to reverse engineer redundant wind turbine blades, potentially right back to their original materials components.
Global demand for plastic applications is growing and forecast to reach nearly 600 million tonnes by 2040 – nearly double the current level.
But new analysis on Phasing out Plastics from the global affairs think tank ODI finds that the world could halve plastics consumption by 2050, recycle 75% of the plastic that remains and increase the amount of plastic produced without fossil fuels – cutting plastics emissions from 1,984million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2015 to 790Mt CO2e in 2050.
ODI’s analysis examines the phasing out of plastics across key manufacturing sectors, highlighting opportunities for industry to spearhead efforts to build back greener.
It finds that plastic consumption could be reduced by more than 95% in the construction sector, 78% in the packaging sector, 57% in the electronics sector and 17% in the automotive sector.
Excellent?
Problem is that means, like squeezing a squishy balloon, the pressure will simply shift, so leading to a different set of problems.
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