(Yicai Global) May 30 — China’s petrochemical giants are rapidly diversifying into new energy fields such as charge cells and sustainable fuels, not to mention heavy investment in renewables such as wind and solar, as the global transportation industry becomes less dependent on fossils. fuels
China Petrochemical, also known as Sinopec, had built more than 2,200 battery charging and swapping stations and 98 hydrogen filling stations by the end of 2022, Chairman Ma Yongsheng said last month. And the Beijing-based company aims to upgrade its more than 30,000 service stations into an integrated network for petrol and hydrogen supplies, as well as battery charging and swapping.
“In two years, French oil major TotalEnergies will have 11,000 load cells in China,” Anne-Solange Renouard, president of TotalEnergies China Investment, told Yicai Global. In five years’ time, the emerging EV charging business is expected to account for a quarter of the company’s downstream business value.”
Moving to renewable energy is not only an opportunity for petrochemical companies to invest in the future, but also a way to offer more “value-added” services.
“The business logic behind the shift from serving gasoline cars to electric vehicles is that refueling a car can be done quickly, but charging is slow,” said Stephane Dion, CEO of Total Lubricants China. “This means that the way we serve our customers should also change. We can consider other services for them while they load their cars. It’s an opportunity we’re actively trying to take advantage of.”
New businesses are also emerging with the electrification of the automotive industry. For example, the lithium batteries used in most electric cars work much less efficiently at very high or low temperatures. As a result, the thermal management of electric vehicles has become a hot research topic. Courbevoie-based TotalEnergies opened a lab in Tianjin this year to develop battery cooling technology.
Sustainable aviation fuels, which reduce carbon emissions by 85 percent compared to regular jet fuel, are also becoming a focus. Last December, a plane from Air China’s cargo fleet flew from China to Belgium using bio-fuel produced by Sinopec’s Zhenhai Refining and Chemical. This was the continent’s first international cargo flight using sustainable aviation fuel, the Civil Aviation Administration of China reported at the time.
“Zhenhai Refining and Chemical is linking arms with several airlines,” Beijing-based Sinopec said in its annual sustainability report. The company could produce 100,000 tons of biofuel a year by the end of 2022.
But China does not yet have a mandatory target for the use of sustainable aviation fuels, so airlines are reluctant to use them because of the cost. Biofuel projects such as Zhenhai Refining and Chemical are still in the demonstration phase.
Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor
