Reporter | Ge Zhenwei
The national carbon market officially opened on July 16, and on July 15, Liu Ke, a foreign academician of the Australian National Academy of Engineering and dean of the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of southern university of science and technology, gave a special speech on "Carbon Neutrality Misunderstanding and Its Realistic Path" in the "Science and Technology Innovation Academician Lecture Hall" in Shenzhen.
<h4>Six current myths about carbon neutrality</h4>
Academician Liu Ke pointed out that the current challenges and understanding of carbon neutrality in the industry are limited, and there are several misunderstandings:
Myth 1: It is believed that wind and solar energy are cheaper than thermal power, so solar energy and wind energy completely replace thermal power to achieve carbon neutrality. In fact, there are 8760 hours per year, and the number of solar power generation hours varies from place to place, averaging about 1700 hours; that is to say, solar energy is about 1/5 – 1/6 of the time period is cheaper than thermal power; and in other 5/6 time periods, if you want to store electricity, the cost will be much higher than thermal power.
Myth two: People think there is a magic large-scale power storage technology, but in fact, the energy industry does not have Moore's Law of the computer industry. "It took more than 100 years of research and development by humans, and the energy density of batteries has not been revolutionized and fundamentally changed", so far the cheapest large-scale GW and power storage is the pumped energy storage technology that was invented more than 100 years ago.
Myth three: chemicals made from carbon dioxide, but on a scale, chemicals made from carbon dioxide do not have the value of carbon reduction. About 87 percent of the world's oil is burned, and about 13 percent of the oil produces all of our petrochemicals. The contribution of carbon dioxide to other chemicals to carbon reduction is quite limited.
Myth 4: It is believed that the use of CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage technology) technology can be carbon neutral. The carbon dioxide emitted by the production process is captured and purified, and then put into the new production process for recycling or storage, which can theoretically achieve large-scale capture of carbon dioxide, but "carbon neutrality is not only a technical problem, but also a comprehensive problem of economic and social development balance", Academician Liu Ke stressed that under the current technology, the cost is very high, and it is impossible to achieve complete carbon sequestration, and the recovery of carbon dioxide in nature is also very difficult. The co2 emissions that have been reduced so far by CCS or CCUS are very limited.
Myth 5: Carbon neutrality can be achieved through improved energy efficiency. By increasing energy efficiency, carbon emissions in industrial processes and product use can be significantly reduced, and China's energy efficiency has indeed improved significantly in the first 20 years, but in the same period, the total amount of carbon emissions has not decreased, but has increased a lot. Therefore, improving energy efficiency is an important means of carbon reduction, but as long as fossil energy is used, the contribution of energy efficiency to carbon neutrality is also very limited, and improving energy efficiency is indeed the lowest cost of reducing carbon emissions, and it should be the most priority.
Myth six: I hope to replace fuel vehicles with electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions, but in fact, the battle between electric vehicles and fuel vehicles began a hundred years ago. Academician Liu Ke said, "If the energy structure does not change, if 67% of the power grid is still coal power, then electric vehicles are increasing carbon emissions, not reducing carbon emissions." Electric vehicles can only be considered clean energy if the energy structure and the power grid are mostly composed of renewable energy."
<h4>How can we achieve carbon neutrality in the future? </h4>
Academician Liu Ke proposed several realistic paths to achieve carbon neutrality:
The first path is to achieve a low-carbon energy system through the combination of existing coal chemicals and renewable energy. On the one hand, the existing coal chemical industry can achieve net zero carbon emissions, on the other hand, it is prepared by electrolyzing water for solar energy, wind energy and nuclear energy, and the synthesis gas is not transformed by water vapor, which greatly reduces the CO2 emissions of coal-to-methanol.
The second path is to use carbon neutral technology in the coal sector – micro-mine separation technology. Before coal is burned, combustibles and minerals containing pollutants are separated, low-cost liquid fuels + soil conditioners are prepared, coal pollution, fertilizer abuse and soil ecology problems are solved at the source, and high value-added chemicals such as methanol and hydrogen are produced at low cost.
The third path is to achieve the comprehensive development of photovoltaic and agriculture, and to combine photovoltaics with agriculture, animal husbandry, water resources utilization and desert governance, to achieve the combination of photovoltaic and desert governance, and the joint carbon reduction of photovoltaics and agriculture.
The fourth path is the comprehensive utilization of peak-valley electricity and thermal energy storage, thermal power plants can not be stopped in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock in the morning, although the thermal power plant is still emitting a large amount of carbon dioxide, but the electricity generated is not used; the use of distributed heat storage modules, in the valley electricity period to store electricity in the form of heat, and then in the need for heating or air conditioning, can greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, to achieve real coal to electricity, and then with the rooftop photovoltaic strategy and the county economy, to further reduce electricity consumption.
The fifth path is to use renewable energy sources to produce methanol, and then do distributed power generation. Methanol hydrogen distributed energy can be used to replace all scenarios using diesel engines, and complement the multi-energy of unstable renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind energy.