DEPLOYMENT, STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF CHINA COAL-TO-LIQUIDS INDUSTRY IN 2020-2030

Coal-to-liquids (CTL) is cleaner than conventional fuels in the combustion phase, but is more energy and green-house gas (GHG) intensive in producing phase. In the next decade, China CTL industry may have completed demonstration and starts to commercialisation. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the potential commercial development of the industry in order to gain an insight into the deployment, strategic significance and environmental impact of CTL industry in the next decade. This paper identified 3 driving forces and 3 barriers for the commercialisation, and integrated them into three scenarios by predicting the changes of the factors. We found that in the scenario of low environmental requirements, the industry will achieve the capacity of 30-40 million t/y, thus reaching the strategic significant scale, and generating 207 to 276 million t of GHG. With the reference scenario, the deployment scale reaches 10-12 million t/y, generating 69.2-83.1 million t of GHG. In the scenario of high environmental requirements, some currently completed projects may be demolished and the industry will be returned to the demonstration or R&D stage, with an industrial capacity of 7 million t/y or less.