Carbon Neutrality and the Development of the Glass Industry
With the development of economic globalization, the world economy has made tremendous progress. At the same time, the development of industry has led to excessive emissions of carbon dioxide, which has had many irreversible effects on the environment, such as global warming and the destruction of the atmospheric ozone layer. These changes have an adverse effect on the sustainable development of mankind. As a major threat to the environment, excessive carbon dioxide emissions have naturally attracted attention.
In response to excessive carbon dioxide, various countries and the international community have launched the goal of achieving carbon neutrality. The so-called carbon neutrality is one of the terms of energy saving and emission reduction. It refers to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated directly or indirectly generated by enterprises, groups or individuals within a certain period of time, which are offset by afforestation, energy saving and emission reduction, etc. Self-produced carbon dioxide emissions, to achieve "zero emissions" of carbon dioxide. The carbon peak refers to the steady decline of carbon emissions after entering the plateau period. Simply put, it means to "break-even" carbon dioxide emissions.
Specifically for the glass industry, carbon emissions in the glass industry mainly come from three sources: fossil fuel combustion emissions account for more than 63.5% of the carbon emissions from glass production, carbon dioxide formed by the decomposition of raw materials or carbon oxidation accounted for 23%, and electricity emissions accounted for about 13%. %. More than 86% of the carbon emissions of glass come from production, and because the prices of coal and heavy oil are lower than natural gas, most of the glass industry manufacturers use coal gas, coal-based gas, petroleum coke, and heavy oil as their main fuels, while natural gas is only used as the main fuel. Auxiliary fuel. Fuel costs account for 50-60% of the entire glass manufacturing cost. Except in areas with stricter environmental protection policies, the use of low-cost fuel is the main choice for most domestic glass manufacturing companies. This has also resulted in the high energy consumption and high emissions of the glass industry.
Then, there are only two ways to reduce carbon emissions. One is to reduce the number of production lines, especially in the long run, to completely shut down a group of companies that do not meet energy consumption standards; on the other hand, to reduce the use of fossil energy and use natural gas. Wait for clean energy to replace low-cost petroleum coke and coal-based gas. To convert coal to gas, the cost of upgrading a production line is at least 5 million yuan, and the manufacturing cost of using natural gas will also increase by more than 20%. These two aspects will bring huge cost changes, industry changes and a new round of supply-side reforms to the glass industry.
