China’s petrochemical plants’ CO2 emissions and high-impact contributors for carbon-neutrality production

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:A detailed process-based emission inventory for China's petrochemical sector, useful for carbon accounting and mitigation modeling.

🏢実務担当者:Identifies specific processes and product chains where low-carbon substitutions can be applied, guiding corporate decarbonization strategies.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for coordinated chain-wide interventions and can inform China's carbon neutrality policies.

The petrochemical sector accounted for 15% of global industrial direct CO2 emissions in 2021, with China contributing 43% of global chemical output and therefore being central to climate-change mitigation efforts. However, the lack of China-specific, process-based assessments has constrained targeted strategies. Here, we present a comprehensive CO2 emissions analysis of 3119 petrochemical plants in China, capturing variations across 123 products, 185 processes, feedstocks, energy use, and product relationships within production chains. We estimate annual emissions at 813.7 million tonnes (Mt) CO2 (±25%) in 2021, offering refined region-specific details beyond previous global or national assessments. We identify distinct emission hotspots at specific processes and product-chain stages, where low-carbon substitutions in feedstocks and reactions can reduce carbon intensity by up to 2.9 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of product, while key stages in integrated complexes can account for up to 50% of chain emissions. These findings highlight the need for coordinated, chain-wide interventions to enable decarbonization.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx7784first seen 2026-05-05 23:52:27