Interface News reporter Zhuang Jian Dai Jingjing

"Make a net-zero future a reality", "Zero carbon first, help the future", "Save energy and reduce costs, help green and low-carbon metallurgy" ......

In the technology and equipment exhibition area of the 7th CIIE, the foreign industrial giants exhibiting in the exhibition hall have put out these eye-catching advertising slogans, and various carbon-related technologies and services have also become the focus of their booths to explore new business opportunities in the Chinese market.

Carbon footprint calculation services for Chinese customers are a new business area targeted by Siemens, a well-established German industrial company. Carbon footprint refers to the total amount of carbon emissions generated by a product from raw material processing, transportation, production to factory sales.

The

staff of the Siemens booth at the CIIE said that in the past three days of the exhibition, many visitors from local governments have shown strong interest in the company's western carbon footprint platform, and left contact information, with the intention of promoting it to local manufacturing enterprises.

Siemens is a product carbon footprint traceability and calculation platform from Siemens, and can provide customers with certification and carbon reduction services through cooperation with partners. It works on the basis of the digitization of the production process of the factory, obtains the energy consumption data of the product manufacturing process in real time, and matches it with the carbon emission factors in the database to calculate the carbon footprint of the product according to a specific model.

Hu Jianjun, vice president of Siemens China and head of the western carbon trace business, told Jiemian News at the CIIE that the company's western carbon platform has accumulated more than 1,000 customers since its release in China in 2022.

Siemens West Carbon Booth, photo by Zhuang Jian

At the beginning of the release of West Carbon, the main customer groups covered were large enterprises with chain masters. With the introduction of policies such as the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the EU Battery Act, new requirements for carbon footprint disclosure, and the pressure of carbon footprint disclosure by large enterprises to the upstream supply chain, more and more small and medium-sized enterprises have begun to pay attention to the topic of carbon footprint.

Carbon footprint calculations and certifications are also on the agenda at the government level. In August this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation and other four departments jointly issued a notice requiring 11 products such as lithium batteries, photovoltaic products, and steel to carry out carbon footprint certification pilots.

Hu Jianjun revealed that the vast majority of West Carbon's current customers are small and medium-sized enterprises, and less than one-tenth of them are large enterprises with chain owners. According to the differentiated needs of enterprises of different sizes, West Carbon is also subdivided into four versions: entry-level version, light selection version, selected version and flagship version.

The flagship version for large chain enterprises delivers a total solution and provides customized services such as carbon footprint presentation. Other versions for small and medium-sized enterprises are limited in the calculation types of carbon footprint products and the selection of carbon factor libraries, but they are sufficient to meet the basic needs of these enterprises to generate carbon footprint reports.

"Small and medium-sized enterprises only buy what is just enough." Hu Jianjun said that the purpose of launching the light selection and selected version is to try to lower the threshold for domestic small and medium-sized enterprises to use products.

In the past two years, the coverage of West Carbon's customers has gradually expanded from the initial steel, tire and automotive industries to batteries, home furnishings, medicinal materials, food and other fields. With the expansion of the industry, a new cooperation model has been derived from West Carbon.

At this year's CIIE, Siemens released a solution launched in cooperation with Sunwoda (300207.SZ). The solution, called Sunwoda Battery Passport Platform West Carbon Trace Edition, can provide services including carbon footprint calculation for enterprises in all aspects of the battery industry. In addition to the battery industry, Siemens has also developed carbon footprint solutions for industries such as steel with chain players such as HBIS Group.

Hu Jianjun said that at present, West Carbon has achieved a breakthrough of 0 to 1 in many industries, and the next stage is to accelerate the promotion to more industries, while strengthening the coverage of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Honeywell Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) booth, photo by Jian Zhuang

Another carbon business that is favored by overseas industrial giants is the highly sought-after Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

SAF is mainly processed and synthesized from waste oil, agricultural and forestry waste, and municipal waste, and is a low-carbon alternative to traditional aviation fuel, which can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the aviation industry.

From September 19, 4 domestic airports and 12 flights began to officially refill SAF. This year has also marked the first year of the launch of the SAF pilot in China.

In terms of economic benefits, Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects the average cost premium of SAF to be 2-4 times that of conventional jet fuel in 2024-2050.

In August this year, Henan Junheng Industrial Group Biotechnology Co., Ltd. won the bid for the SAF procurement project of the Civil Aviation University of China at a unit price of 28,000 yuan/ton, which is about four times the price of traditional aviation fuel.

China's "big gutter oil producer" and abundant renewable power in many regions have attracted industrial giant Honeywell to continue to bet on China's local SAF business.

"During the Expo, many provincial government delegations came to communicate with us about Ecofining™ and other processes." On November 7, Sun Jianneng, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Energy & Sustainable Technology Group China, said in an interview with Jiemian News and other media that the production demand for SAF is also different due to the difference in resources in different regions and provinces.

Ecofining™ and eFining™ are both Honeywell's SAF technologies, with the former mainly using waste fats, greases and other raw materials to produce SAF, and the latter being a methanol-to-jet fuel process.

Sun Jianneng said that for regions with relatively large consumption of edible oil, such as Sichuan and Hubei, Honeywell's Ecofining™ technology can convert food waste oil into sustainable aviation fuel in these areas.

To date, Honeywell's Ecofining™ process has been applied to two sustainable aviation fuel industrial bases in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, and Suining, Sichuan Province, China.

"In the Northwest region, where green energy resources are relatively abundant, we can convert these resources into electronic methanol and further into SAF." Sun Jianneng said that this conversion technology from methanol to SAF can not only take advantage of local natural resources, but also promote the development of the local green energy industry.

Green hydrogen from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, combined with CO2 hydrogenation to produce green methanol, is becoming a key energy carrier.

In August this year, Honeywell reached a strategic cooperation with Inner Mongolia Jiutai Group to build a methanol-to-SAF project with an annual output of 100,000 tons by adopting eFining™ process technology. This partnership is Honeywell's first commercial contract to license eFining™ technology worldwide, marking the first commercial application of eFining™ process technology.

Biodiesel is also a renewable energy source, mainly used in transportation, and the application of raw materials has a certain overlap with SAF, forming a certain competitive relationship. Since SAF requires additional hydrogen and processing, it is more expensive to manufacture than biodiesel.

On July 19 this year, the European Commission announced the pre-disclosure announcement on the preliminary ruling of the anti-dumping investigation of China's biodiesel products, affecting Chinese companies such as Jiaao Environmental Protection (603822.SH) and Excellence New Energy (688196.SH).

Sun Jianneng believes that the EU's tariffs on biodiesel in China are both a challenge and an opportunity, which will prompt Honeywell to focus more on the local market and technological innovation.

"The supply and demand market of China's SAF industry has not yet been fully activated. From the perspective of the current industry development, high production costs and high application costs have become constraints to the development of SAF. Sun Jianneng said that Honeywell looks forward to further improving the support policies for the SAF industry, giving appropriate financial subsidies to all links of the industrial chain such as SAF technology research and development and production, and encouraging the technology research and development of multi-route raw materials such as agricultural and forestry waste.

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