The industry for green ammonia and green alcohols is beginning to take shape

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In recent years, green ammonia and green alcohols have attracted considerable attention as fuels and chemical building blocks with zero or low carbon emissions. **Policies also encourage the use of green and low-carbon technologies for the production of ammonia and methanol, and the industry is beginning to take shape. At the 2025 National Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Conference and the 9th meeting of the 7th board of directors, which was held recently in Jincheng, reporters conducted interviews on the current status, challenges, and future prospects of green ammonia and green alcohols. Industrial development receives attention from all parties. “At present, considerable efforts have been made in China regarding the practical application of green ammonia and green alcohol industries.” ”Wen Qian, deputy chief engineer of the Energy and Chemicals Division at the Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute, said. According to Wen Qian, looking at the overall progress of green ammonia project development in China: the Yuanjing Energy project with an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons is already in operation ； There are 5 projects under construction, including the 180,000 tons per year green ammonia project built by Jidian Company in Baicheng, the 50,000 tons per year green ammonia project developed by Guoneng Group in Cangzhou, as well as the first integrated marine hydrogen-ammonia-alcohol project established on Yantai’s Marine Energy Island; the 200,000 tons per year green ammonia project carried out by China Energy Engineering Group in Songyuan, and the 150,000 tons per year green ammonia project developed by Shenneng in Ordos. It is expected that 3 to 4 new green ammonia demonstration projects will come online by 2025, bringing the total production capacity of green ammonia to 400,000 tons, which is a considerable scale. “The development of domestic glycol projects is also receiving significant attention. Its raw material routes include the production of methanol from biomass or urban waste, the production of methanol through the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide, and the production of low-carbon methanol using green hydrogen. ”Wen Qian said that the former meets international green certification standards, but the latter two scenarios may be suitable only for domestic circulation at the current stage. Wen Qian explained that regarding the production of methanol via carbon dioxide hydrogenation, China has currently built one plant with a capacity of 110,000 tons per year and another with a capacity of 100,000 tons per year, in addition to several pilot-scale plants with capacities of several thousand tons each. Biomass-based green methanol production projects can be divided into two categories. The first category includes Daqing Refining and Chemicals and China Sea Chemicals, which use existing methanol plants to produce methanol by adding bio-natural gas; the second category is the project developed by China Gas in Ordos to produce 100,000 tons per year of green methanol from biomass and waste, and this project has already been put into operation. Most of the other projects under construction are green alcohol projects that combine biomass gasification with a small amount of green hydrogen. Projects scheduled to come online this year include those carried out by Goldwind Science & Technology in Xing’an League, China Tianying in Liaoyuan, and Shanghai Electric in Taonan, all located primarily in Inner Mongolia and the Northeast region. It is expected that by the end of 2025, the production of green methanol from biomass could reach a scale of 400,000 to 500,000 tons per year. According to the reporter’s research, at present, China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s green alcohol project uses biogas generated from the fermentation of urban waste such as kitchen waste and animal manure as raw material, and feeds this biogas into the company’s existing conversion units to produce green methanol. As a result, the company has obtained China’s first ISCC EU certificate for green alcohol produced from urban waste, which means that China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s green alcohol products now have approval to enter the European Union market. “Once this portion of methanol produced by the company is classified as a green alcohol, its uses can be expanded to the field of ship fuel, which will help reduce the company’s carbon emissions. Additionally, it is expected that profits can be generated from selling carbon allowances once it is included in the national carbon market in the future. ”Zhong Guobin, head of the Production Management Center at Offshore Oil Fudao Co., Ltd., told the reporter. Four key factors drive industry development. Driven by domestic and international policies, the development of new energy sources, and the low-carbon transformation of the chemical industry, the domestic industries related to green ammonia and green alcohols are beginning to take shape. ”Wen Qian said. According to Wen Qian, the rapid development of the green ammonia and green alcohol industries in China is driven first and foremost by international policies; the main reason for this development is the increasing demand for green liquid fuels in the international shipping industry. Based on the ongoing research on the development of green liquid fuels under the 15th Five-Year Plan, it is estimated that by 2030, China’s green liquid fuels will account for 4.5 million tons in terms of fuel oil equivalents (representing 30% of the International Maritime Organization’s target), with green ammonia alcohols playing a key role in this contribution. The second major factor is that domestic renewable energy has a cost advantage over foreign ones. Due to the rapid development of new energy sources, the costs of wind and solar power generation in China are declining swiftly, and China has a clear advantage in terms of these generation costs compared to the United States and Europe. “We believe that a price of 0.15 yuan per kilowatt-hour for green electricity in regions in China that have advantages in new energy resources is achievable. ”Wen Qian emphasized. The third major driving force comes from domestic policy support for green hydrogen, green ammonia, and green alcohols. In March last year and April this year, the **Development and Reform Commission issued two batches of the ‘List of Demonstration Projects for Advanced Green and Low-Carbon Technologies’. A total of 47 projects were included in the first batch, of which 8 were green liquid fuel projects such as hydrogen, ammonia, and alcohol. The second batch included 101 projects, of which 19 were related to hydrogen. These included Sinopec Xinxing’s integrated project for producing hydrogen from wind and solar energy at a capacity of 100,000 tons per year, as well as a demonstration project for hydrogen pipelines connecting Ulanqab with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. There was also Tianying New Energy’s demonstration project for integrating wind, solar, storage, hydrogen production, and ammonia/alcohol synthesis, as well as Goldwind Green Energy Chemical’s demonstration project for producing green hydrogen via wind energy at a capacity of 2 million kilowatts per year, along with 500,000 tons per year of green alcohol. Furthermore, the hydrogen-ammonia energy storage demonstration project at Foshan Xianhu Laboratory is also an important innovation aimed at the emerging application scenarios for green ammonia products. The fourth major driving factor is the need for the industry to transition toward lower carbon emissions. Ammonia synthesis and methanol in the nitrogen fertilizer industry are the two products in the petrochemical industry that contribute the most to carbon emissions. In 2024, the production of synthetic ammonia was 73.2 million tons, of which coal-based synthetic ammonia accounted for 74%. China’s annual methanol production amounts to 91.82 million tons, of which 78% is produced from coal. **Policies have repeatedly emphasized the need to reduce carbon emissions through the combined use of green hydrogen and green electricity alongside coal-based chemical manufacturing. New projects in this industry are responding positively to the requirements related to the use of green electricity and carbon reduction; coal serves more as a raw material in this context. The green transformation of this industry drives China’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, which is in line with the country’s resource characteristics.