MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ambitious pledges from China's leaders to cut emissions have put its giant, carbon-intensive state corporations under pressure to respond, but they are at risk of falling short amid confused policy signals and other constraints, reported Reuters.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping said last September that the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases would slash emissions to "net zero" by 2060, attention turned to China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
China has already submitted updated climate targets to the United Nations as a new round of climate change talks gets under way in Glasgow. The next challenge is working out how to implement them.
However, the struggles facing China's giant firms will make it harder for Beijing to offer stronger pledges and smooth the way for a more ambitious program of global emissions cuts - especially as it negotiates its way through crippling power shortages.
"State firms are busy drafting their plans and trying to set their targets, and some of them are already creating more detailed planning for the transition," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), which tracks the environmental and climate records of big corporations in China.
"How to ensure that they can fulfil other demanding targets while in the meantime achieving climate targets needs a real solid transitioning strategy, and so far there are still major gaps," Ma added.
IPE has assessed 58 listed units of Chinese state-owned enterprises from sectors such as steel, petrochemicals, electric power and aviation, covering more than 1 B tons of annual emissions. The study found that although they are generally ahead of their private sector counterparts, some are lagging, and on indices such as energy efficiency, sectors like steel are still behind global rivals, Ma said. Of the 58, 91% have disclosed climate and emissions data in their official reports. More than half have taken action to reduce emissions, but only 16% so far have announced targets.
Meanwhile, just six have issued formal "climate declarations", including giant power generators like Huaneng , Huadian and Datang, all of which have vowed to bring emissions to a peak by 2025, earlier than the national 2030 goal.
Three others - Baowu Iron and Steel, China's biggest steelmaker - as well as the two biggest oil and gas suppliers PetroChina and Sinopec - have all promised to hit "net zero" around 2050, a decade earlier than the national target.
As MRC wrote previously, in August, 2021, Sinopec, the world's petrochemical major, launched the first phase of the Gulei refining complex in Zhangzhou city in China’s southeastern Fujian province. The refining complex, a 50:50 joint venture between Sinopec’s Fujian Petrochemical Company Ltd and Taiwan Xuteng Investment Company Ltd, invested 27.8 billion yuan (USD4.28 billion) in the first phase. That will result in an 800,000 tonnes per annum ethylene plant, a 600,000 tonnes per annum styrene unit and seven other downstream petrochemical units, Sinopec said.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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