With the development of society, environmental pollution has become more serious, and smog is covering the whole world. Therefore, countries have taken carbon reduction as their top priority, and set a goal of achieving a peak global carbon emissions of 32 billion tons by 2020. However, this goal has been exceeded in 13 years. There are data pointing out that the new carbon emissions in the future will mainly come from developing countries, accounting for 75% of the world. This makes carbon-extension countries urgently need to replace traditional energy sources with green and clean energy. In particular, China, as the country with the largest carbon emissions, has made reducing carbon emissions a top priority.
Natural Gas Development Affects Carbon Emissions Peaks Under the background of the development of low-carbon economy in the world, the global natural gas resources are abundant and the technology is relatively mature, which provides a basis for the application of green energy natural gas. Renewable energy in green energy will be the first, with a share of about 40%, and the second is natural gas. Because renewable energy is not a substitute for fossil energy as a fuel, natural gas will play an extremely important role in China's low carbon development.
According to statistics from recent years, global carbon emissions will reach its peak in 2030. With the widespread use of a large number of alternative energy sources, fossil energy growth will not be curbed until 2035, and there will be a turning point.
From 1971 to 2012, the global natural gas energy structure has undergone tremendous changes. The world's proven reserves of natural gas resources are very rich. Coupled with the success of the North American shale gas revolution, it is optimistic that the supply of natural gas will increase greatly in the future. This guarantees natural gas to replace fossil energy from resources. If large-scale use of natural gas instead of fossil energy will inevitably reduce carbon emissions, the peak level of carbon emissions will depend to some extent on the development of the natural gas industry.
For various reasons, China's development of the natural gas industry is 30 years later than developed countries. Compared with other countries, China's natural gas consumption is still very small, which is inconsistent with the status of the world's second largest economy.
At present, China has three major rigid demand for natural gas.
The first is to improve energy efficiency and ensure supply.
In the past, China has increased the consumption of more than 200 million tons of coal each year. Now it is subject to the control of carbon emissions and there is a trend of capping coal consumption. In the future, more renewable energy will replace this part of coal energy. Natural energy is still mainly dependent on natural gas, but the replacement of natural gas is not a simple isothermal replacement, but a doubling of the efficacy alternative, that is, the efficient use of natural gas.
The second is that natural gas is used for power peaking and load center power supply protection.
With the development of nuclear power and wind power, the power supply method is diversified. Although China may not be able to generate natural gas power generation in recent decades, natural gas is very suitable for power peaking, and the proportion of natural gas peaking will continue to increase in the future.
The third is that natural gas replaces gasoline and diesel as transportation fuels, reducing smog and imported oil. Natural gas substitutes for gasoline and diesel contain huge market demand.
According to the above demand, China's natural gas demand will reach 400 billion cubic meters to 450 billion cubic meters in 2020, and will increase to 700 billion cubic meters to 800 billion cubic meters in 2030.
The main force of transportation and energy transformation China has carried out the second energy revolution, but the energy structure is still mainly based on coal and gasoline. The amount of natural gas is still very small, and it is inevitable to accelerate the development of the natural gas industry. Because LNG is not restricted by the pipe network, it is more flexible to operate, and China's energy users are widely distributed, and there are many sporadic users, so it is very suitable as an important supplement to domestic natural gas demand.
At this stage, LNG is the main force in the transformation of China's transportation energy and low carbon. The World Energy Organization predicts that in the next three to five years, or even 20 years, the world's demand for petroleum products will be mainly diesel, mainly from the logistics industry - freight heavy truck diesel demand. Due to the rapid development of storage power and fuel cells, they are used as alternative energy sources for gasoline in small household cars, so the demand for gasoline for domestic cars will be reduced in the future.
However, there is no mature technology for storage power and fuel cells that can be applied to heavy trucks. One of the most realistic solutions for reducing carbon emissions in heavy trucks is to replace diesel with LNG. Moreover, LNG trucks have developed rapidly in the past 10 years, and countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia have already had demonstration projects and formed a certain scale.
In China's energy consumption structure, diesel consumption is twice that of gasoline. Some agencies predict that by 2025, the number of heavy-duty trucks in China will be the highest in the world, and it is entirely possible to use LNG trucks instead of blindly increasing the amount of gasoline imported or diesel. In fact, the development of China's LNG industry has been aimed at the automotive fuel market. In particular, the development of LNG as a transportation fuel in the past two years has been phenomenal, with a growth rate of 200%. Liquefied natural gas instead of diesel is not only cheap, economical, and environmentally friendly.
In the industrial chain of China's LNG heavy truck applications, the technology from the fuel tank to the engine, as well as the entire vehicle, has matured and can be fully localized. At present, China's first large-scale LNG ship has been launched, and the first LNG filling station in the Yangtze River has been put into operation, showing good economics. At the same time, the efficiency of liquefied natural gas replacing gasoline and diesel is also very high, which has become a huge driving force for the development of liquefied natural gas. Taking medium-developed provinces such as Anhui as an example, replacing LPG with LNG, the market demand for one year is 3.787 billion cubic meters, which shows that the demand for LNG market in China is very large.
From the perspective of the severe low-carbon situation and the existing green energy technology, LNG is the best choice for heavy truck applications. Liquefied natural gas will be the largest transportation fuel market in China and the world in the future, and the associated LNG equipment will also develop. It is likely that China will become the largest LNG equipment manufacturing and export base.
Tank transportation of liquefied natural gas into a mobile gas source Small liquefied natural gas and container transportation is an important part of the midstream of the industrial chain. China and the United States have similar reserves of unconventional natural gas resources, even more than the United States, but the situation in the two countries is very different. According to Hua Wei, the total length of the US natural gas pipeline network has reached 2 million kilometers, while the total length of China's natural gas pipeline network is currently only 60,000 kilometers. Some people believe that China cannot develop the natural gas industry.
In fact, China's LNG industry has developed rapidly. Its success is mainly due to the “two legs” walking in the middle reaches of China's natural gas. One leg is a pipe network and one leg is “movable” LNG. Loading and transportation). China's LNG industry has reached the forefront of the world from upstream liquefaction to midstream transportation to downstream applications. It is understood that China National Container Corporation has started to carry out LNG container rail transportation. In the near future, the LNG of the whole train will be quickly transported from Xinjiang to Guangdong. It is initially scheduled to send a train every day, and the LNG freight and The freight rate of the pipeline is similar.
China's domestic LNG is mainly transported by automobile container, train container and inland container. The transportation cost ratio of road, railway and water transportation is 5:3:2, the road transportation cost is the highest, and the water transportation cost is the lowest. Now LNG transportation mainly relies on roads, not even container transportation. When most of the container transportation is realized, the transportation cost will be greatly reduced. In the case that the pipe network planning is not in place, the transportation cost of LNG is still far lower than the transportation cost of the pipe network. In the future, China's natural gas industry will have two legs to walk, and will not hinder the development of natural gas.
With the gradual increase of urban gas supply, the gas supply mode will be based on “small liquefied natural gas tanked transportation + local area network gas supply”, which will be the development direction of future urban gas supply mode. This part of the supply of LNG will also be the vanguard of the development of the natural gas industry - with less investment, lower gas costs to achieve gas supply, and when the natural gas market in some areas matures, the trunk line network will be built.
Liquefied natural gas tank transportation has great flexibility, can quickly adapt to the change of gas source and gas consumption, avoid new market use, less one-time investment, long investment recovery period, high depreciation cost, etc. risk.
LNG tank transport can effectively reduce costs in local areas. At the same time, the transportation of LNG tanks can better develop and cultivate new markets for downstream natural gas, coordinate with pipeline transportation, and gradually extend the network and service scope.