Can new energy sources replace traditional energy sources in the future?

In the foreseeable twenty or thirty years, new energy will not completely replace traditional energy, and the former is only an effective supplement to the latter. Because the development of new energy sources will also have such constraints, such as whether the development of biomass can compete with people for food and cannot compete with food for land; The development of coal-based alternative energy is facing the constraints of coal resources, water resources and environmental resources, as well as the challenges of technology and capital. Therefore, the scale of alternative energy in China is not large at present, and China's energy demand will depend on traditional energy for a long time to come.

Broadly speaking, new energy includes renewable energy such as biomass energy, wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and hydropower. It also includes unconventional oil and gas resources such as oil sands, oil shale, combustible ice and coalbed methane. Compared with transportation fuel, it also includes coal-based and natural gas-based alternative fuels. At present, in the field of new energy, Sinopec is mainly committed to the development and application of biomass energy and coal-based alternative fuels. Biomass energy includes biofuel ethanol and biodiesel. At present, China is the third largest producer and user of fuel ethanol in the world, second only to Brazil and the United States, with a fuel ethanol production capacity of 1.22 million tons/year; Among them, Sinopec participated in the construction of 820,000 tons/year. Biodiesel developed late in China, and there is no large-scale practical application at present. In the field of coal-based alternative fuels, a number of coal-to-liquid production devices are being built in China, and Sinopec is also conducting scientific research and development and tackling key problems.

In recent years, China's energy consumption has ranked second in the world. In the annual energy consumption structure, coal accounts for 69.4% and oil accounts for 2 1.0%. Under the background of high oil price and increasingly tight energy supply, it is necessary to develop new energy sources and realize energy diversification to meet the growing energy demand. Take biomass energy as an example, its biggest feature is renewable, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As we all know, greenhouse gas emissions have caused global warming in recent decades, so environmental protection also needs to be considered. Under the condition of high oil price, actively developing new energy, supplementing non-renewable energy with renewable energy, and supplementing non-dominant resources with superior resources are conducive to alleviating energy resource constraints, coping with environmental challenges and realizing sustainable development.