National oil and gas conglomerate PTT Plc aims to cooperate with two Japanese companies on an initiative to cut carbon dioxide emissions and develop bio-based feedstocks for the petrochemical business.
The company is interested in joining hands with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to study the use of hydrogen to replace fossil fuels as well as carbon capture and storage technology, and is seeking an opportunity to work with Sunyo Petrochemical Industries on the development of eco-friendly raw materials, said Ratthakorn Kampanathsanyakorn, PTT's senior executive vice-president for sustainability.
Collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries aligns with PTT's efforts to contribute to the international campaign against global warming.
"We aim to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases from businesses under PTT in order to achieve carbon neutrality," said Mr Ratthakorn, referring to PTT's goal of striking a balance between carbon dioxide emissions and absorption by 2040.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is developing a technology that will let a power plant operator replace a certain amount of natural gas with hydrogen to generate electricity.
Hydrogen is expected to play a more important role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which will lead to greater hydrogen demand in the global market, said Tozawa Takashi, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' vice-president for energy systems.
Greater consumption of hydrogen will also drive up demand for machinery designed to use hydrogen as a fuel for power generation, he said.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has successfully adopted a co-firing technique mixing natural gas with hydrogen, amounting to 30% of all gas fuels, to produce electricity.
The company is conducting a study to increase the proportion of hydrogen to 100%.
"We aim to use only hydrogen to spin turbines to generate electricity and expect to launch a machine using this hydrogen fuel by 2030," said Mr Takashi.
Despite the benefits of hydrogen in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the price of this fuel is expensive and investment in the hydrogen-based technology is huge, he said.
Mr Ratthakorn said PTT also wants to work with Sunyo Petrochemical Industries, which intends to supply new raw materials made from sugar cane and casava to petrochemical plants in the eastern province of Rayong.
"We have just started to discuss the cooperation projects with Japanese companies, paving the way for PTT to achieve its environmental goal," said Mr Ratthakorn.