With the development of society, environmental pollution has become more serious and smog is now covering the world. Therefore, all countries have made reducing carbon emissions the top priority and set a target for global carbon emissions to reach a peak of 32 billion tons in 2020. However, this target has been exceeded in 13 years, and there are data indicating that the future new carbon emissions will mainly come from developing countries, accounting for 75% of the world. This makes carbon- consuming countries urgently need to use clean green energy to replace traditional energy sources. In particular, China, as the country with the largest number of carbon emissions, is making reducing carbon emissions a top priority.

Natural Gas Development Impacts Peak Carbon Emissions

Under the background of low-carbon economy development in countries all over the world, the global reserves of natural gas resources are abundant and the technology is relatively mature, which provides the basis for the application of green energy and natural gas. Renewable energy in green energy will occupy the first place, about 40% of the share, and the second place will be natural gas. Because renewable energy is not a substitute for fossil fuels as fuel, natural gas will play an extremely important role in China's low-carbon development.

According to statistical data in recent years, global carbon emissions will reach the highest peak by 2030. With the extensive use of a large number of alternative energy sources, the growth of fossil energy will not be curbed until 2035, turning a corner.

From 1971 to 2012, the global natural gas energy structure has undergone tremendous changes. The proven reserves of natural gas resources in the world are very abundant. Coupled with the success of the North American shale gas revolution, it can be optimistic that the supply of natural gas will increase substantially in the future. This resource from the perspective of natural gas to replace fossil energy. If large-scale use of natural gas to replace fossil energy will inevitably reduce carbon emissions, so the level of carbon emissions peak to a certain extent also depends on the development of the natural gas industry.

For various reasons, China's development of the natural gas industry has been a full 30 years later than that of developed countries. Compared with other countries, the use of natural gas in China is still very small, which is inconsistent with the position of the world's second largest economy.

At present, China has three major rigid demands for natural gas.

The first is to improve energy efficiency and ensure supply.

In the past, China used more than 200 million tons of coal each year, which is now restricted by the amount of controlled carbon emissions. There is a tendency to cap coal usage. In the future, more renewable energy will replace this part of coal energy. The main source of renewable energy is natural gas. However, the replacement of natural gas is not a simple alternative to isothermal, but a doubling of efficiency replacement, which is the efficient use of natural gas.

The second is natural gas for power peaking and load center power supply protection.

With the development of nuclear power and wind power, the mode of power supply is diversified. Although China may not be able to generate natural gas in recent decades, natural gas is very suitable for peaking electricity, and the proportion of natural gas peaking in the future will continue to increase.

The third is the use of natural gas instead of gasoline and diesel as transportation fuel, reducing haze and the amount of imported oil, and natural gas as an alternative to gasoline and diesel has huge market demand.

According to the above demand estimation, 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 energy transformation

China has already carried out the second energy revolution. However, the energy structure still relies mainly on coal and gasoline, and the amount of natural gas is still relatively small. It is inevitable that we must accelerate the development of the natural gas industry. Liquefied natural gas is more flexible because it is not restricted by the pipe network, and it has a wide distribution of energy users in China, and there are many sporadic users, so it is very suitable as an important supplement to domestic natural gas demand.

At this stage, liquefied natural gas is the main force in China's transportation energy and low-carbon transition. 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 – diesel demand for heavy cargo trucks. As storage power and fuel cells develop rapidly, they are used as alternative energy sources for gasoline in small household cars. Therefore, the demand for gasoline for domestic cars will decrease in the future.

However, there is still no mature technology for storing power and fuel cells that can be applied to heavy trucks. One of the most realistic solutions for heavy trucks to reduce carbon emissions is to replace diesel with LNG. Moreover, LNG trucks have developed rapidly in the past 10 years, and the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries 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 trucks in China will be the largest in the world, and LNG trucks can be fully utilized instead of blindly increasing gasoline imports or the use of diesel. In fact, the development of China's liquefied natural gas industry has been targeted at the automotive fuel market, especially in the past two years, the development speed of liquefied natural gas as transportation fuel is alarming, and the growth rate has reached 200%. LNG instead of diesel is not only cheap, economical, and environmentally friendly.

In China's LNG heavy truck application industry chain, from the fuel tank to the engine, as well as the vehicle, the corresponding technology has been very mature, fully able to achieve localization. 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 production. Both have shown good economic performance. At the same time, the efficiency of liquefied natural gas in replacing gasoline and diesel is also very high, which has become a huge driving force for the development of liquefied natural gas. Taking the middle-developed provinces like Anhui as an example, the demand for liquefied natural gas to replace gasoline and diesel for a year is 3.787 billion cubic meters. This shows that the demand for the liquefied natural gas market in China is very large.

From the severe low-carbon situation and the existing green energy technologies, the application of LNG to heavy trucks is the best choice. Liquefied natural gas will be the largest transportation fuel market in China and even the world in the future. The supporting liquefied natural gas equipment will also develop along with it. It is likely that China will become the largest LNG equipment manufacturing and export base.

Tanks transport LNG into a mobile gas source

The transportation of small liquefied natural gas and containers by vehicle and ship is an important part of the middle reaches of the industrial chain. China and the United States have similar reserves of unconventional natural gas, 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.

Actually, the LNG industry in China has been developing rapidly. Its success is mainly due to the fact that China's natural gas middle reaches is “two legs” walking, one leg is a pipe network, and one leg is “removable” LNG (through irrigation). Loading transport). The LNG industry in China has come to the forefront of the world from upstream liquefaction to midstream transportation and downstream applications. It is understood that China National Container Corporation has begun to carry out LNG container rail transport. In the near future, the LNG of the entire train will be transported from Xinjiang to Guangdong soon. It is tentatively set to issue a train every day, and the LNG freight will be The shipping cost of the pipeline is almost the same.

China's domestic liquefied natural gas is mainly transported by car containers, train containers and inland river containers. The transportation cost ratio for roads, railways, and water transport is 5:3:2. The cost of highway transportation is the highest, and the cost of water transportation is the lowest. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) transportation is mainly based on roads, and it is not even containerized. After most of the container transportation has been realized, transportation costs will be greatly reduced. In the situation where the pipeline network planning is not in place, the transportation cost of LNG is still far below the transportation cost of the pipeline network. In the future, China's natural gas industry will have two legs to walk, and it will not hinder the development of natural gas.

With the gradual increase of urban gas supply, the gas supply model will be mainly “small LNG canned transport + local area network gas supply”, which will be the future direction of urban gas supply model. This part of the LNG supply will also be the vanguard of the development of the natural gas industry – to achieve gas supply with less investment and lower cost, and to build a trunk pipeline network when the natural gas market in some regions matures.

Liquefied natural gas tank transport has great flexibility, can adapt quickly to changes in gas source and gas consumption, avoid new market development, use less pipeline, large one-time investment in pipelines, long investment recovery period, and high depreciation cost risk.

LNG tank transport can effectively reduce costs in local areas. At the same time, liquefied natural gas tank transport can better develop and nurture new downstream markets for natural gas, coordinate with pipeline transportation, and gradually extend the scope of pipeline networks and services.