 I think we're ready to start our first panel. The moderator is Matteo Carnello. We have three excellent panelists, Jennifer Port, Jules Bergeson, Raphael Legal, and I'm now going to turn it over to Matteo for the first panel. Thank you Richard and welcome everybody. I'm happy to see all of you tuning in again for this exciting workshop and I thank Richard, Maxine and everybody also involved in organizing this and of course our panelists as well that I will introduce in a minute. Before we get started I just wanted to get everybody on the same page. We're breaking down now this important challenge of decarbonizing and electrifying industry in smaller chunks and what we're talking about today in this panel in the next hour and a half is about refining and chemicals. So we realized from yesterday's discussion especially from Arun's perspective that this problem will require multiple efforts in different areas and it's not going to be one only area that we'll be able to contribute and solve everything. So today we're exploring how the production of chemicals and the refining industry can contribute to decarbonization and electrification in particular. We have experts discussing first of all introducing the problem and discussing the most important areas where electrification and decarbonization are needed and can be actually utilized. So the format of this panel is similar to the ones we had yesterday. We'll have I will introduce three speakers one by one and each speaker will give a short presentation introduction from with their perspective on this challenge and then we will follow with a panel discussion of about 40 minutes. So I invite the audience to ask questions for the panel and put them in a chat and then I will collect the questions and go through them at the end of all the presentations. So I will invite first our first contribution this morning is from Rafael Legal. Rafael joined Total Energies in 1997 as an R&D engineer and after a long career in the company he became the CO2 conversion team manager of Total Energies Global R&D Program in 2021. Rafael is in charge of the R&D team located at Total Energies in Belgium Research Center working on CO2 conversion processes to decarbonize chemical manufacturing. Thank you so much for being here Rafael and please. Thank you very much Matteo. So I will share my screen. I'm very glad to be here with you for this Stanford workshop and to discuss about the electrification and decarbonization. This is a great solution for refining and chemicals. As a lot of oil and gas company Total Energies in the last years fixed its own ambitions in terms of CO2 reductions by your first objective in 2030 by a decrease of 40% in CO2 emission in comparison with the emission in 2015 with an ultimate objective in 2050 to go toward a net zero objective. If we look at the CO2 emission in the company we can see that this emission are split in between the two main branches of the company the exploration production and the refining and chemical branch of Total Energies and you can see here that the global amount of CO2 emission is around 20 million tons per year scope one and two for the refining and chemical and if we look at the origin of this emission we can see that 90% of the origin of this CO2 emission are linked to the use of fuel gas in refining and chemical complex and we have a 10 person or 10 person coming from liquid and solid fuel and we have some emission as well with flaring and vents. If we look a little bit more in detail which unit produce this CO2 emission we can see that NAFTA cracker which allows us to produce the molecules for polymer production leads to very important emission. We have also a fluid catalytic cracking unit which allows to convert heavy feedstock into mainly gasoline and diesel which emit as well a lot of CO2. The use of the furnace of the cool distillation unit emit also a lot of CO2 and the reformer also produce a lot of emission as well. I do not mention in this diagram the steam methane reformer the steam methane reformer units for the production of hydrogen leads to quite a huge amount of CO2 emission as well and if we look now at the different levels that we have in order to reduce this this emission we have different stages and in total energy we consider a step by step approach to what the the net zero and the first option which is very important on the current asset of the company is to reduce the CO2 emission by optimizing the current units in how complex by optimization for example the energy efficiency of the processes. Another important level is the use of electrification of processes on main equipments as for example electrification of furnaces that use fuel gas and it's a way to reduce drastically the amount of CO2 emission. An overall alternative to go toward less CO2 emission is to replace fossil feedstock by alternative feedstock like bio bio feedstock in in existing assets for example by doing a co-processing into a classical I would say refining processes. An over point but it's a higher capex intensive solution is to transform our oil and gas assets into I would say bio bio refinery and it's a topic on which we work by transforming a classical refinery into bio refinery to produce for example bio bio diesel and the last point that we consider would say more the period after 2030 2045 is to build new windfield site based on new feedstock like CO2 as a raw material but also bio feedstock and very high amount of electrified processes in these new complexes. So the reduction of CO2 emission in current assets effectively we have several ways to reduce it the first one is to for example reduce the flaring we know that if we burn methane it will induce the production of quite a huge amount of CO2 emissions. It's very important as well to look to look at the reduction of methane leaks because methane is as an important impact on the climate temperature effect and the over important part I would say is the optimization of energy efficiency in our assets by doing some housekeeping optimization and tuning of the current assets by for example optimizing the furnaces in the refinery which leads to a very high amount of CO2 emission. Another important point is the better integration of exergy and it's very important to look at the quality of the energy more than the quantity of the energy and to look the best solution to integrate this exergy. Another point is also to use alternative fuels in order to produce steam on electricity by replacing for example natural gas or fuel gas in gas turbine by using some hydrogen in this gas turbine and another point very important is also to improve the recovery of waste heat by doing a valorization of this waste heat for example by increasing the level of temperature of this waste heat but also by transforming this waste heat into electricity. So first step toward net zero is the optimization of our current assets. Another point very important in our refinery or petrochemical units are the transformation of classical furnaces that use a lot of fuel gas and fuel gas has a very important impact on CO2 and so the idea is to transform this furnaces by a deep electrification of these furnaces. So effectively electrification is a good lever to reduce CO2 if electricity is green and if this electricity has a low carbon intensity. The idea as well is to rationalize the use of steam for the process needs and try to use electricity for some specific pieces of equipment like rotating equipment like pumps, compressor, use electricity for tracing and also use electricity to produce steam in boilers. Another point very important as well in the RC complexes is to transform the main furnaces for processes which need calories or mainly endothermic reaction processes and so for example it's we have an idea and project on converting naphtha cracking furnaces into electric or furnaces but the same thing for steam metal reformer and over processes like reverse water gaseous which is an important technology brick for the production of synthetic fuel as well and another important point is our ability to well modelized a platform in terms of steam and electricity production and in a way to reduce the consumption of natural gas import and the use of fuel gas as well. But we have to keep in mind that the use of this higher amount of electricity will impact normally the optics of the site due to the fact that electricity cost is higher than natural gas cost and we have to keep also in mind the evolution of green electricity price in the future and so I would say for a short term focus I would say it's important to deploy this electrification toward the most emitting processes and equipment. After effectively another important point is the use of alternative feedstock in refining and chemical assets and here you can see to appear the possibility to produce biofuels and e-fuels by using biofeedstock for the production of biofuels and electrons and water for the production of e-fuels to put in place a circular economy and to close the loop for the carbon use by putting in place the CO2 neutral cycle. So effectively the first point that we tried to do is to make co-processing in refining unique by using biofeedstock to have idea how we can use CO2 as a raw material for carbon source to go toward a synthetic fuel and as I said biofuels and e-fuels are considered as CO2 neutral but the concern is the access the generalized access to this biofeedstock which is a key point but access as well to the green electricity. So I would say that co-processing could be a good thing as a bio oil feedstock as a first step to use the current processes but not enough if we want to fulfill the future sustainable liquid fuel demands and so CO2 is really a good complementary feedstock to fill the gap and so now if I go forward I move forward to add the new pathway that could be implemented in new green feed sites in the future effectively we have this kind of mapping starting with CO2 water and renewable electricity and you can see on this slide that we have several technology brick very interested in the production of sustainable liquid fuel for example here for sustainable aviation fuel both we have I would say two main block of processes thermo conversion processes and electro conversion processes using CO2 as a feedstock. So we have different level of maturity in this different technology brick for example you can see here the hydrogenation of CO2 into into methanol but effectively over processing converting CO2 into CO or syngas is a good way to obtain platform molecule very important to go toward sustainable liquid fuels and I would say on my last slide that if we look at the map in Europe we can see that decarbonization and electrification become a reality we have quite a lot of project whose aim is to produce sustainable liquid fuel with different level of production of e-fuel and what is very important to say is that for the moment we can say we are still in an agnostic vision of the way to produce this synthetic fuel because we have not a unique way to produce them and we can see that we have a lot of reverse water gaseous plus fissures rock project but we have as well some project using CO2 to methanol pathway in order to produce synthetic synthetic fuel so I would say that effectively we have a lot of ongoing project in Europe based on several different pathways and carbon neutral synthetic fuel are very key for the decarbonizing of the transposition sector because this sector accounts for I would say 25% of the world's energy related CO2 emissions and liquid fuel are really a key and critical for the hard to obey sector such as aviation or shipping thank you very much for your attention it was my last last slide Thank you very much Raphael for introducing the challenge and certainly providing a few different avenues to explore and will certainly explore more in the panel discussion so it is now my pleasure to introduce our second speaker who is an academic speaker is Professor Jules Bergerson. Jules is an associate professor in the department of chemical and petroleum engineering and Canada research chair in energy technology assessment at the University of Calgary she works in developing tools and frameworks for the assessment of perspective technology options and their policy implications from a life cycle perspective. Jules thank you so much for accepting our invitations and we look forward to hearing your thoughts before getting into the panel. Great thank you very much thanks for having me yeah so I'm going to be talking primarily about refining as well and you know good to hear that a lot of my messages are not inconsistent with what Raphael just presented and he provided a lot of really great background information I think I take maybe a little bit more of a you know the societal perspective and as well as a systems perspective and so I think I'd start by maybe pushing back on Mateo's statement in the structure of this workshop where we're looking at these individual sectors of the economy which I think is important and we need customized decarbonization strategies for that but I also think that the systems perspective is really important to think about these transitions over time and I think it's particularly important in refining and so you know what I see as multiple pressures on refinery today that that lead to different types of decision making if you look at them in isolation versus as a whole and so this this pressure to decarbonize is there in refining but it's also there across the supply chain and so thinking about decisions within the sector really does have to take the rest of the supply chain into account because you can end up with some unintended consequences or miss out on opportunities to reduce. There are regional variable and uncertain changes that are projected in terms of products like demand which I think is really important to take into account as well as some of the feedstock options and again needing that systems level to look at that so my research program looks at systems level analysis of decarbonization options and by doing that in refining we can help to identify some of the opportunities for emission reductions that might be most cost effective in the near term versus the long term as well as envisioning what the refinery of the future might look like and the systems perspective I would argue allows for sort of opening that up a little bit more and looking a little bit more creatively about what this sector could look like into the into the future which is a low carbon future and so to do this type of work we have a tool that we have built which is called the prelim model so it's the petroleum refinery lifecycle inventory model so it is at a systems level it represents sort of typical types of refineries we can do three basic refinery types so you know that that is the majority of what's deployed today so hydro skimming medium conversion deep conversion different combinations of those process units can represent you know a range of different refineries that are operating today we look at it's an Excel based open source tool so you can download it from the link below on our group's website we take basic information about the the the crudes that go into these refineries as well as the the fractions of those crudes to be able to actually look at individual process units energy requirements intermediate product specifications and final products we can also sort of look at allocating emissions to the different products and just to highlight here one of the key things that we need to take into account is that we've got a whole slate of different products and that demand for those products is changing as we think about the transition over time we have to think about all of those so as you decarbonize and electrify the economy all of these products are not going to change in demand in a linear fashion in the same way and so thinking about how to best use this this resource is really important to take into account and so the example I would give is is electrification you know one of the biggest impacts I would see on refining is that electrification of transportation will decrease demand for different transportation fuels in different proportions over different time periods and so how might these operations react that they're not going to scale down linearly based on that demand change so it's an important factor I would say that we're just about getting ready to release version 1.6 of this model so if anyone's interested in learning more about it happy to chat about that later but what we can do with this in representing existing refineries is actually start using it to identify opportunities for reductions so this is a greenhouse gas emissions for different types of refinery configurations so it's not any one particular refinery but a range of different ways you could you could see up the refineries operating around the world and then it's broken down by and these are greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of crude processed it's broken down by the type of energy that's being consumed that then contributes to greenhouse gas emissions so this by itself helps us to just sort of understand where the opportunities to reduce are you can see that there are that that process heating is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions for most of these configurations and so with that we have opportunities for incremental changes with energy efficiency reductions and improvements and things like that so if you don't have cogeneration you can better use the gas that you're using by generating both steam and electricity for example improving individual units with you know more advanced technologies the higher efficiency those kinds of things and then there are still low-hanging fruit in terms of process integration in some refineries I think one of the systems questions we have with that is how much do you invest in those more incremental sort of immediate type of opportunities versus looking at the long-term decarbonization deep decarbonization options the electrification of heating I think is definitely possible I think what we see in most jurisdictions is that current carbon pricing doesn't make it economically competitive so until either carbon pricing or other incentives would be there we need to think about that I think the other question associated with it is if you have a source of plentiful renewable electricity or low carbon electricity is it best to use it in this type of sector or should you be using it for other purposes and how do how might they compete for the use of that I think there are definitely opportunities to do that but I think we have to think strategically about how to best use that resource this is just another way of looking at that same data this is looking specifically at the US and the refining configurations that are actually deployed in the US and so now we've got the attribution of total emissions in the US from refining broken down by the refinery configuration type so again this helps us to understand where the opportunities are in any one jurisdiction so we can look at multiple jurisdictions this one is just the example of the US refineries so we see that the medium conversion and the deep conversion are the two you sort of big contributors to overall greenhouse gas emissions and therefore would be the priority for reductions this is a third way to to slice and dice these emissions and actually doing it by pro individual process unit for each of these refinery configurations and with that we can start looking at things like carbon capture and so looking at these individual units the energy that's being consumed in the greenhouse gas emissions we can start prioritizing the process units and the streams of CO2 where CO2 capture would be most advantageous and so we can look at the units by their relative greenhouse gas emissions and then we can also look at strategies for opportunities to reduce looking at specific configurations and refinery type that has been deployed I won't spend too much time on that I'll just say that if we pick the top process unit so process heaters that's where we have the maximum potential for carbon capture if we're looking at medium and deep conversion refineries then the steam methane reformer tends to be another big opportunity and then with the deep conversion specifically we've got more diversity in terms of their their operations but the steam boiler and the FCC units might be additional opportunities and just comparing these potential reductions so these are avoided greenhouse gas emissions here this is avoided using carbon capture we pick these top for streams of CO2 you can get on the order of a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from these refineries so very refinery specific but definitely getting us down the path of much larger emission reductions and with something like a deep conversion you might have more complex strategies for the way in which you get carbon capture you capture the carbon and that might be something that gets you even further along the path using carbon capture technology I think the other piece though is to say we can incrementally improve the operations within an individual refinery but I think we might then be missing out on this bigger opportunity to re-envision what a refinery could do so these refineries are you know 400 plus refineries around the world strategically located close to demand centers and and they're highly sophisticated complex chemical refinery complexes and so we have the opportunity to think about some of these emerging technologies and how they might be synergistic with existing or new refineries into the future and so the dark blue bars are actually looking at individual process units that we have in existing refineries today and then everything outside that are opportunities for additional technologies that could be deployed that might help us leverage some of the opportunities at that individual refinery level and so this also just does that connection also to things like petrochemicals and the downstream. Thinking about those more synergistically from that system's perspective we can think about how do we respond to changing demand for products and maybe connect into petrochemical opportunities in this space I think as as Rafael had mentioned as well this conversion of CO2 into synthetic fuels or co-processing of biobase feeds or other types of feeds those those are other opportunities that we might be able to look at to understand how they might be competitive in this low-carbon future as well and I won't go through all of them but I do think that there's quite a number of opportunities in terms of ways in which we could re-envision existing refineries to the point that was made about the discussion yesterday in terms of learning curves you know this large-scale demand for hydrogen might help to prove out some of these technologies and get some expertise that would help them scale and similarly the CO2 conversion pathways might benefit from being integrated within a refinery complex like this and so we are looking at a range of CO2 conversion pathways the reverse water gas shift and the fisher tropes process might offer some additional flexibility for refineries to actually adapt into the future and so with that just the key message then being that the systems level does allow us to look more creatively across the entire supply chain and at synergies between existing capacities and and future demands and and and dealing with pressures like decarbonization so there are some near-term opportunities that could help reduce but also that longer-term potential and I'll just leave you this is a a thank you diagram that we had in one of our recent papers and it sort of identifies that the refineries as being that linchpin in the supply chain so on the left hand side we've got the the production of crude oil we've got on the right hand side the demand for the products and different jurisdictions around the world and that middle point is that refinery and and to me that that just strikes me as being a huge opportunity to help rethink the way that these processes could connect together in a low-carbon future so with that I'll just thank our Prelim team and and look forward to the discussion that will follow thank you thank you Joe that was a great overview of the refinery and I see there's already a few questions trickling into the chat but we'll definitely address all of them under specific questions for our speakers in about 20 minutes so now it's time to for me to introduce the last speaker for this panel and the next speaker is Jennifer Port who is currently chief of process sustainability for ExoMobil supporting ExoMobil's ambitions to lead in sustainability and the energy transition we'd use greenhouse gas emissions and increase circularity of products and Jennifer comes to us with over 25 years of experience in technology roles within ExoMobil technology and engineering company thank you as well Jennifer for being here and we look forward to your presentation as well thank you thank you very much I'm honored to be speaking with you today and I've been asked to speak broadly around decarbonization opportunities and challenges in the chemical industry as a whole and so to start when we talk about the word chemicals I'll draw your attention to the right side of the diagram we're really talking about the thousands and thousands of different products that improve our quality of life and meet society's needs there are obvious examples like fertilizer packaging for food preservation pharmaceuticals the list goes on and on even specifically in electrification think about plastics that lightweight electric vehicles lubricants for wind turbines materials for electricity storage even down to the very coatings on the wires themselves we can see that chemicals will truly have a critical role to play in our net zero ambitions now while the industry makes thousands of end-use products when we start to look at things like energy use and greenhouse gas emissions I want to shift your view to the left side of the diagram most of the energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions result from the production of what we call the three primary chemical building blocks and those are what we call high value chemicals which include olefins and aromatics ammonia and methanol and this is important because the global demand for chemicals based on what we just talked about and the global demand for these primary chemicals is predicted to grow and in some cases you can see by this chart grow dramatically if unabated with production growth will come emissions growth as we can start to see on the chart on the right chemical production by its nature is relatively high energy intensity because we have to do some serious rearranging of chemical bonds and we typically have to separate our products to very very high purity in order to meet product safety and performance requirements so think about things like the packaging that that's touching your food or the diaper that you're putting on your child I mean those are very obvious examples of things that need to be safe and things that need to perform and that results in a high energy intensity now high level when you look at the production pathways for these primary chemicals for the example of ammonia and methanol we typically see the same starting point you're producing synthesis gas or sin gas in the case of ammonia in order to make hydrogen for the ammonia step and then in the case of methanol to make carbon monoxide and hydrogen for the methanol synthesis step and we've talked even in in these past two days that and there's a lot of discussion going on right now about low carbon pathways to hydrogen and synthesis gas and so in my talk today I thought I would use the example on the bottom of olefin production to highlight some of the specific opportunities and challenges the blue box on the bottom represents the olefins production pathway via a process called steam cracking typical feedstocks would include what we call mgls or natural gas liquids think think of things like ethane or propane or butane it can also include liquid products that derive from crude oil that have gone through refineries things like nap the cuts or gas oils steam cracking itself is an extremely highly endothermic thermal pyrolysis process while we use steam as a cofeed to the pyrolysis step it helps us improve yields and prevent fouling and hence that's where we get the term steam cracking so this is actually my last slide and I wanted to spend some time here what I've tried to do is to list some of the opportunities and challenges and then point to where in the process they're the most impactful and focusing on electrification with starting with a key assumption that the grid has already been decarbonized which is a critical assumption to make I've chosen to use an olefin plus olefin derivative production example so we have nap the that's flowing through the steam cracker that makes ethylene and then ethylene to ethylene oxide which ethylene oxide has its own end uses but it also participates in the ethylene glycol and polyester value chain so first starting on the upper left with what I call high level considerations and and these really span more than just steam cracking we've talked about some of these already in the workshop number one we have to recognize that the size and scale of industry is immense both from a capital point of view and an energy consumption point of view and so just a frame of reference a modern sized steam cracker would make something like 1500 kilotons per year of ethylene and that can consume around one gigawatt of energy per cracker and one gigawatt is about the size of a world scale power plant just to run that cracker itself number two in order to achieve economy a scale these plants are massive they are big they are expensive typically multiple billions of dollars per site and they run a long time I often joke with my younger engineers we have many assets in Exxon mobile that are actually older than I am once you sink multiple billions of dollars you want to run that asset as long as you can so when we think about research opportunities and developing new technologies one of the things that becomes really important is we have to have ways to de-risk and prove out new technology especially if you are going to ask a producer to make a multi-billion dollar 50 plus year investment number three this is a mature commodity global business and I think that opens up a lot of interesting opportunities in areas like business commercial policy when we think about what is the best way to get a huge industry to shift and change to decarbonize what are the lowest cost market mechanisms that would incentivize producers to lower their emissions what about things like industry benchmarks for say carbon footprint of products so that people have something to compare and who who would send those who would set those benchmarks and how would we monitor those and certify those and what we're finding in the chemicals area is you know due to the the nature of our products the number of our products this is actually a really interesting and nascent area with I think lots of opportunities for research if we move to the blue box in the middle and kind of get more into the details of the process number four specifically for steam crackers thermal pyrolysis the temperatures are high we're hitting around 1200 degrees C or over 2000 degrees F in the firebox and while we do have electrification solutions that that theoretically can reach those temperatures the other challenge we have is that the heat flux is also high and so what we're doing in this reactor is we're cracking and blasting these molecules apart in a couple hundred milliseconds at most and dictated by thermodynamics it's just a huge end of term we can't get around that so we have it's really fast we got to get a lot of heat at a very high temperature has to get in super quick making electrification a real challenge we already talked about economy of scale these plants are big they run 24 7365 they do not turn on a dime so number five reliability and intermittency of electricity it's it's important as we think about electrification it's actually a base case issue for steam crackers I remember when I was training our operators at our new facility that just started up near corpus Christi and they were disappointed that we had not installed our own cogen power generation system at that particular site and that they would have to rely on the grid and understand that less than 10 percent of that cracker energy comes from electricity and they were still tremendously worried you know you get a power blip at your house your kids might complain about losing internet but when you're firing massive pyrolysis furnaces and running over 100,000 horsepower of large complex turbo machinery a power blip can can take your plant down for hours or even days an opportunity that's again it's broader than just the chemical industry but how do we model and design I like the previous speakers words on systems how do we design the electrical system from generation infrastructure storage the whole system that will have the reliability that's needed to run these big industrial plants and then finally if we move over to the green box there are some items that electrification just doesn't solve so number six is shown here with ethylene oxide production you're reacting ethylene with oxygen but reactions aren't perfect and and some of the reactions go a little bit too far and we end up producing co2 in the process itself so the co2 is not coming from the combustion for energy consumption but it's just occurring in the main reaction itself and needs to be purged from the system and finally number seven listed here in in chemical processes and also refining processes there's often the production of byproducts and off gases that need a disposition they really need a home they're often kind of a hodgepodge of things they're contaminated with with with contaminants it makes it very difficult to go in and recover molecules of interest and so today they're typically burned in the case of steam cracking there's also a significant production of byproduct methane which we typically recover and then burn in the furnaces and so I hope what you've gotten today is that the chemical industry is complex there's thousands of products that are important for modern life we focused today on on one of the three primary chemicals namely olefins production as an example and when we look at all these factors put together you can start to understand why we're seeing so many references and projects related to things like hydrogen fuel switching and carbon capture and storage hubs there's just a lot of concrete and steel that's in the ground already where electrification on a retrofit basis is not straightforward and fuel switching the hydrogen in combination with CCS probably makes more sense in the short term especially when you consider you can couple that with other CCS opportunities as shown here in number six where we have production paths that inherently make CO2 independent of combustion and so again I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today and I look forward to the questions that will come in the panel thank you. Great thank you so much Jennifer so much packed into one slide but it definitely opens up the discussion for many questions so at this point I will ask our panelists Raphael, Joel and Jennifer thanks again for your remarks to join me and first of all I want to start off the discussion with a few questions on my side for specific panelists but then that can be addressed by other panelists as well and then I'll open the floor to questions from the audience and so already a few questions in the chat so maybe Raphael I'll start with you but again Joel and Jennifer feel free to then add your thoughts as well one thing that struck me from your presentation is the idea of moving from more traditional processes in refining to then potential new processes of just CO2 conversion then the question is when shall we consider for example completing new processes rather than for example retrofitting current processes yeah yeah thank you for the question effectively we have this this challenge to identify the most promising way to decrease this CO2 emissions and effectively we we have this idea in the first step to try to use the electrification of processes and of main equipments to as a first step to decrease this emission it's a less intensive capex way to reduce the emission and effectively after we have this idea but it will be more in the next decades to implement new new processes but it will be more capex intensive effectively maybe I'll ask that same question to Jennifer because you highlighted very well in your presentation Jennifer the fact that this building a new plant is very capital intensive and when is it that in your opinion we should start considering retrofitting that plant or starting from scratch with a new process I think in the chemical industry because of the projected growth I think that's actually an opportunity to consider new processes maybe earlier than other industries so please don't misunderstand me I'm not discounting the very important aspect of decarbonizing our existing assets but let's look let's look forward and look at new technologies and what I'll tell you is we're actually considering those new process pathways now one of the issues we do run into is is taking a risk with with the with the amount of capital risk that we take when we build these industrial scale complexes we really need to find ways to de-risk that new technology prove it out and have a pathway to ensure that the the plant will run safely reliably and make the product that we want sorry so I think yeah Raphael was talking about some of the technologies from a greenfield perspective that I was talking about from a you know synergistic with existing infrastructure perspective and I think the answer will be sort of I think the answer will be regionally specific I don't think it's going to be technology specific right so I think we've seen discussion of petroleum refinery shifting to become bio refineries in locations where the bio resources is available and and economic in other places I think there's going to be additional challenges and I think this idea of citing new you know large chemical complexes should be taken into account as well that'll be a hurdle to build something completely new from scratch and so I think looking for opportunities to make use of the existing system as well as all the expertise of me the infrastructure that's there we shouldn't discount that we should be considering that and putting it on the table for sure thank you Joel I wanted to stay maybe with Joel and ask a question about emissions I really appreciated your your work on understanding emissions from the point of view of their finding there's this debate whether to consider that emissions from the use of the products and the chemicals and the the refining products when should we consider those or shall we consider those as part of the emissions from a refining operations and how then should we consider about decreasing those emissions within the refining industry yeah I think I think we should always consider them whether we place the burden of reductions on the refinery I think is a separate question I think you want to look for the most cost effective reductions and I think there are things you can do at the refining stage that will affect those downstream I think I think it's more of the the feedback coming from the downstream towards the refineries so this idea of you have a balance of products you're producing if you have you know large electrification of the transportation fleet and your gasoline demand drops that then translates back to decisions that have to happen in the refinery so I think you always want to take those into account and I think there are some choices you'd make at the refinery that might have negative consequences on the downstream side so you might be producing products that would have higher carbon intensities or things like that but the the counter side to that is that there are opportunities at their refining stage to also affect those downstream and we know from the transportation life cycle greenhouse gas emissions that 60 to 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions come from burning the fuels in the vehicles so we definitely want to have that front and center as you're making decisions throughout the supply chain thank you Joel Rafael and Jennifer what are your considerations in in this sense from an industry perspective I like how Joel mentioned the life cycle view and I think that becomes an important view when we consider when we consider the functional units so in the case of a refinery that's typically a transportation I need to I need to move from this point to this point I need to transport for chemicals what we find is is the story due to the thousands of products we have it while the life cycle view is critical it becomes it becomes difficult to to just take a single product and then and then presuppose what all the uses will be for that product so there are some examples like packaging where the functional unit is to contain something and to preserve it and and we do see you know certain chemicals like like polyethylene packaging having life cycle advantages versus other alternative materials but then you know you have to consider the the whole life cycle of that plastic and it becomes an interesting and complex conversation and that's what we point to things like you know there's lots of there's lca's that are published in the literature and you can see a lot of differences in those and that's why something like an industry benchmark or this is the way we're going to view this we need to start moving towards that so we can all get on the same page and move in the same direction to reduce emissions. Thank you Raphael you want to add to the discussion please. Yes and I completely agree with Joel and Jennifer arguments and effectively it's something that we perform as well this complete lca study that take into account effectively the use of fuels and yes for our side it's a need to take into consideration this fuel consumption. So may I ask Raphael for your particular company this goal of net zero does that take into account then the emissions from the use of the products or is it in the operations? Effectively in our ambition we have the defined but I think it's the same thing for the oil and gas company that we will split the CO2 emission into several scope and effectively we have defined our objective in scope one two and three and effectively it's well it's well taken into account in our ambition. Thank you Raphael I wanted to go a little bit more into details of especially CO2 conversion for example the case scenario that you presented from your company's perspective and I'm wondering how do advances in other processes then affect your plans for electrification decarbonization? So for example I would imagine that planning for making chemicals from CO2 would rely on advances on CO2 capture for example or maybe not. How do you deal with this potential uncertainty in having to develop other processes as well before you're able to then really tackle the challenges in decarbonizing electrifying certain processes in your company? Yeah so effectively the CO2 conversion topic is really a topic in R&D in the company and so effectively we are organized I would say in a program dealing with a complete overall chain of CO2 so the CCUS value chain so we take into account effectively the challenges in the area of CO2 capture and effectively we have R&D in this area and effectively in the conversion and in the use of CO2 we work on different processes electrified processes to convert CO2 into a platform molecule allowing you to produce a synthetic fuel. Thank you Jill in the context of process heating your analysis was really interesting in highlighting really the particular processes that are most important to target in order to decarbonize the refining operations so do you see from your perspective interesting options for solving the problem of heating provided that the pricing scheme for carbon is now going to change because of course that would be a major factor but since heating is one of the most important elements playing a role in energy consumption do you see are you aware of or from your perspective are there options for heating that are there seem to be more appealing than others especially from an LCA point of view? Yeah so we haven't spent too much time going into individual units in the conversion that would be required to electrify the heating process obviously technically possible but the economics seem to be challenged right now for refining I think the other side Raphael had mentioned as well is that the refinery fuel gas is something that is produced within the system and is an energy resource to use and so if you're going to switch to something else you have to think about how you would use that product as well and so the carbon capture on that system seems to be a good fit for that heating and seems to be more competitive from an economic perspective today than electrifying I think there might be opportunities to think about other ways to use that fuel gas you know in terms of pairing it with a petrochemical process or or something else um but I think you know it's it's not a um an easy fit in terms of something else that might be on the table I would say that the most promise I see is with the carbon capture. Thank you Jill that then allows me to um ask a provocative question then how about shall we consider then carbon capture as a solution to everything so rather than kind of like worrying of decarbonizing specific processes should we put all our chips into carbon capture or is that a wrong way to consider options for a future yeah and I always go back to my systems thinking right I think I think that uh with with carbon capture you know you're placing it on a stream of CO2 but if that stream of CO2 is is going away because of the demand for the product that that that process is uh producing um you don't want to be you know investing in something that in the long term is not going to deliver right so I think you need to have the the sort of short term medium term long term horizon perspective in terms of which which of these investments are going to make sense today and in the near term to get us some early reductions but then what is also going to be a robust decision into the future that we know is highly uncertain right where the carbon pricing will be at 2050 whether or not we've maintained our momentum in achieving net zero you know all of those kind of questions come in to decide which of these investments is going to make sense and and hopefully we're taking that different time period horizon into account when we make those decisions. Jennifer and Raphael do you want to comment? Yeah I would hesitate with the phrase put all our chips into CCS but we absolutely do believe that that CCS is a critical part of this decarbonization solution for a lot of the reasons um that we've already talked about when I've started to see the world as kind of a super a mix of carbon and hydrogen and um you know regarding the CO2 utilization question when you look at a carbon-hydrogen balance and especially if we look at those chemicals building block products that I mentioned ammonia methanol and olefins they have a very high hydrogen to carbon ratio I always the thing I'm missing is hydrogen I'm rarely missing carbon so I think CO2 utilization is challenged from a thermodynamic perspective and also from a resource perspective I got plenty of carbon around what I don't have is hydrogen I think I think CCS coupled with hydrogen production is going to be a game changer in the coming years for sure. Raphael, yes and effectively as I said in a total energy company we look at all the chain all the CCS chain so we consider that we can develop a specific business model around the CCS uh carbon capture is very important because it's a way to uh to uh to to to take the CO2 produced by our unit so we have we have to develop the installation the implementation of a CO2 capture unit uh in order to to um to have this trim of CO2 but we think in in the company as well the importance of a CO2 conversion CO2 utilization to go toward a synthetic fuel so I would say that we have an overall view by using both I would say CCS and CCU perspective to transform our industry. Thank you I agree on the um complex perspective and on looking at different options for sure but I also like really Jennifer's words on the fact that carbon capture and hydrogen in particular are going to be keys for the future um so I want to now um I would have more questions but I want to make sure we go through the questions asked by the audience before we conclude in this panel. There was actually a question by Loic Franke for Jules I want to go in in order um and Jules the question was what are the frontiers of your system although I don't really understand the the overall meaning of the question so maybe Loic if you want to if there's a chance to unmute yourself and maybe ask Jules the question directly. Yes can you hear me? Yeah perfect let's go ahead. Yes my question is that in the LCA that was considered by Jules what is the frontier of the system that was considered is it only the refinery or the complete system from from the well to um to grave? Yeah thank you so the boundary of the the emissions that I was presenting are just the refinery gate but they do include emissions that come from electricity consumption um if you're consuming purchased natural gas then it has the upstream natural gas consumed it doesn't have the extraction of the resources or the end use because I was focused on opportunities to reduce emissions within the refinery that's just one way to look at it though right we we collaborate with Adam Brant at Stanford who has the OPTIM model to look at the upstream and variability and upstream extraction of resources as well as looking at the downstream pieces so I was focused today on the refining boundary but definitely you need to connect that into the full life cycle to really see the full picture. Thank you Jules and another question did you consider a new electricity supply? The low carbon electricity transition in the grid that means that today the electricity carbon footprint is what it is but within the transition it will be more and more decarbonized. Did you consider in your transition the decarbonization of the electricity grid? Yes very much so so I think you know one thing that we showed was that the electricity emissions even using say natural gas for your electricity source are a relatively small contribution to the total greenhouse gas emissions in a refinery and if as you transition that lower it will reduce but it'll be more moderate than something like carbon capture and storage on the steam generation units for example. I think the other side of it is you know how best to use renewable or low carbon electricity. I think that's still an open question but definitely something to be taken into account when we look at that future of refining. Thank you Jules. Thank you. Thank you Jules. We'll get back to you. There was another question from Matt Cannon to Raphael. Matt will you want to unmute yourself and ask directly the question? Sure yeah thanks and just a little bit more context so thinking about you know alternative routes to jet fuel starting from green hydrogen and CO2 so yes my understanding is that the CO2 hydrogenation of methanol is pretty well established technically and so you know what is the value of trying to develop the CO2 hydrogenation to ethanol versus what we already have with CO2 to methanol if the end goal is jet in other words is ethanol a more advantageous intermediate on the way to the jet than methanol you know with current alcohol to jet conversion technologies. Yeah thank you for the question. It's a good one and I would say that the first part of the story is how to produce effectively alcohol. Alcohol is a very good platform, very good platform molecules toward sustainable liquid fuel so the first part is the production of this alcohol so we have the choice between methanol as you said from hydrogenation of CO2 it's a major technology and after you have the production of ethanol so you have different possibility to produce ethanol and what is interesting is to compare the different ways to produce alcohol so methanol versus ethanol it's the first point but when you have produced ethanol you are not at the end of a story so after that you have to add several technology bricks in order to reach the SAF or the EJET and so what is important to consider as well is what you will have that the outlet of after the alcohol production and the typology of olefins that you will produce if it's ethylene or propylene or butene because in function of the quality of the olefins the difficulty or ability to produce sustainable aviation will not be the same so I would say that what is very important is to develop I would say a complete tool which allows us to benchmark this different pathway you know between CO2 and silver production of sustainable aviation fuel and I would say that at the end we will not have perhaps a unique solution this solution will depends of very of a lot of parameters the location where you will produce for SAF the cost of electricity the the amount of CO2 in the in the electricity that you will use to produce this SAF so I would say it's a very complex question and you need to develop I would say a very deep modeling of all these different pathways in order to to specifically orientate the business of the company thank you I was just going to add to that I think that's right we're looking at this right now and one of the things that's come up is to say if you want to go through ethanol to jet then you need to think about the competing pathways and so there are some commercial scale biomass pathways to ethanol and it has been suggested that those will likely always be more competitive than a CO2 conversion to ethanol to jet I'm not ready to stand behind that yet I think we need to do some additional assessment to understand that but I think it highlights the point that as you start looking at these pathways you need to think about you know these some of these early stage technologies and how they might evolve over time and what their potential is but also what will they be competing against and under what conditions might you prefer the CO2 conversion to other pathways that we have available and to just adding more questions to this rather than answers but thank you Joel for that perspective as well and let me before we move to the next question Rafael this question from Matt highlighted the fact that in your chart in your schematic of the multiple ways to move from CO2 to different products all the things you had some of the processes were electrified processes some of them were thermochemical and there was one only process the one that then Matt was asking about which is biological probably enzymatic approaches how do you see then in the context of decarbonization electrification the role of biological processes especially in the production of chemicals? Yes this type of processes is of interest for total energy and so these processes are of interest for us effectively because we are able to start the conversion of CO2 or CO with this biological technology and I would say it's very interesting to see in which extent we can use as well over processes in conjunction of these biological processes to to have a synergy for example we can effectively imagine reverse water and gas sheet which is a thermo conversion process very interested in the way to produce CO and we know that CO could be a good feedstock for biological processes in order to enrich the feedstock so we see that we can have a synergy between several processes but effectively these biological processes have to be as well compared to over pathway to produce liquid fuel. I see that Shafiq Jaffer commented on this discussion Shafiq do you want to unmute yourself and maybe provide us with your opinion on this? Yeah sure I think you know there's no silver bullet here and I think anybody that's believing that is in a pipe dream things like NIMBY issues not in my backyard issues acceptability of the public are going to overplay anything technical by far the politicians and how policy is going to make are going to be driven first by that right if we think it's going to be technical rational driving policy you know you're having been paying attention to politics sufficiently so let's first put that on the table and the second one then is limitations of renewable electricity how much you can actually get to where you need it and where the CO2 sources are is going to also limit how much you can do in terms of production of fuels or any kind of chemicals out of CO2 and the second is biomass as well that is not available everywhere in sufficient quantities so we need to think about where's the highest value for the various sources and biomass probably has the highest value to kind of go for jet fuel short term right as we try to fit very constrained problem because of the existing fleets and existing equipment that you can just substitute fuels easily you have to have very specific specific specifications on the fuels people forget all the aging issues and material compatibility issues in these planes have been designed for very tight tolerances on specifications of fuels so you can't just substitute anything easily in that and as we try to broaden that then you know perhaps bio and that can be spread out but I think we have to take the most value for where the most constraint is when we think about use of the biosources so let's not forget about kind of these other constraints when we talk about trying to say okay there's one pathway or one silver bullet here I don't think there is by any means thank you Shafiq that's a very important element to keep in mind Julie please yeah I was just going to respond on that I think I think that's all very critical as we go through this I think the techno economic greenhouse gas footprint is part of the decision-making process public exceptions like I think all of these things are pointing towards that regional transition and really keeping that focused on both regional in terms of availability of resources as well as public perception and you know that will be different in different regions as well I just highlight as well that I think as part of that having a credible and transparent system by which you actually demonstrate to society that you've achieved your reductions is really critical and we're not seeing enough movement in that direction I think I think you know we can find the best technical solution and and really succeed in implementing some of these technologies but if we don't have a robust system that society buys into in terms of an accounting process by which we can track that and that it's a fair and consistent basis globally then we might lose the public again in terms of the the opportunities for these reductions and demonstrating that we've achieved them I'll just add that to that right I think jewel I think that's spot on and I would extend it it's not only with respect to public acceptance it's also having these benchmarks and and accounting as you as you say in market mechanisms as well so that we can allow people to compete on an even level playing field thank you so I think this is a good segue for alexander su's question alexander do you want to unmute yourself and ask jules directly your question yeah sure I would I don't know if this is too naive a question but I was just curious I guess about that last slide you showed where you know there's so much crossing between different countries so I was curious I guess in addition to market demands are there sort of considerations of you know different policies or different incentives you know from different market countries or like of the final products that are kind of taken into account at the refinement level right now yeah I would say definitely there's not enough dialogue across those supply chains right there's intermediaries that mean that some some points in the supply chain never actually even know what is the fate of some of the products that are being produced and I think that leads to missing out on opportunities for that there will definitely be conflicts and and different interests and you know even the public perception will be different in different regions so I think we can't expect that we're going to get a uniform decision everyone agrees to and then everyone does it I think that that's unrealistic but I think taking those you know strategic views across this very complex network of players really could help give us the sense for which direction should we be going and again going into this you know measuring and and managing these emissions as long as that is credible transparent and consistent then we can start seeing that movement but I think you know it will continue to be you know different transitions in different regions for sure thank you thank you Joe I want to spend at least a couple minutes before we get into the break and conclusions from this panel talking about intermittency because I think Jennifer you highlighted really really well in your presentation how when we think about electrifying processes we have to consider the fact that if we want to operate on renewable electricity the sources will be intermittent and then Raphael showed us the importance of storage so where do you think are the well we probably know the challenges but where do you think are the opportunities there in then modifying current processes or coming up with should we really consider coming up with completely different processes that are able to withstand intermittency more reliably than the processes that we're running today because as you said even processes that have minimal input from electricity then engineers really worried about intermittency in those cases what what what do you think Jennifer is an opportunity here I'm going to I'm going to steal from jewel again and say it's that systems approach it has to be drawing a box around the whole system we can solve little individual pieces of the problem but these these grids generation transmission and then usage are really on a system basis and we've we've if you look at crude oil and chemicals global supply chains things like fuel pipeline systems feedstock pipeline systems we're able to solve those problems from a material balance point of view having multiple feedstock pipelines into a plant or multiple fuel pipelines into a plant just to deal with that hey what if I lose pipeline number one I got pipeline number two ready to go and we need that that similar thinking applied to the electrical system and there and I think there are ways to design that whether they're capital efficient or not as remains to be seen but having some real dedication to that reliability and intermittency issues is going to be required and I would conclude then in terms of relationships between academia and industry this is a topic that we will be discussing very much in detail tomorrow but you know I want to take a minute or two to discuss about that where do you think are the opportunities in developing this relationship to the academia and industry to come up with different ways to potentially novel ways and processes to produce the chemicals that we need today and what is it that what would be your suggestions for academics and then using the guidance from industry essentially in making sure that we focus on the right thing I think it starts with conversations like we've had over the past couple of days I think just you know I'm just so thankful that Stanford wanted to invite some industry experts to come speak at this conference so you can hear what our concerns are and hear you know if you're going to focus focus here and and and what I'd say is CCS hydrogen that's in the mix where this this is something that is going to be in the mix it's something we specifically at ExxonMobil are serious about developed a whole new business line low carbon solutions to address it and then looking providing that technical and transparent consistent look into some of the issues that we've discussed is important and then thinking broadly to the geographic and geopolitical ramifications of this I mean that that's that's been historic in the oil gas petrochemical industry since its inception and I think you know academic institutions that have the the great minds and the time to to research those things are going to be critical moving forward so just I would say recognizing the complexity and ensuring that we're working on the right problems thank you Jennifer Jo yeah please yeah I was just going to add I think you know doing the systems level analysis couldn't happen without collaboration with industry I think if we just went to the academic literature there would be insufficient data and expertise and those boots on the ground of of the intricacies of how these things operate how decisions are made and things like that so I think that's absolutely critical I was also just going to highlight an example in the carbon conversion space while capture and conversion Lafarge wholesome a big cement company in their their bc plants that they have they're actually doing a capture demonstration and conversion technologies and so right on their site they're actually demonstrating some of these earlier stage technologies at a smaller pilot type scale but doing it at the operational site you know careful to not affect operations but really using it as an opportunity to mentor technology developers and test out the technologies and help them scale the technologies it seems like that you know some of the technologies that they're they're deploying are actually academic lab scale work that they're trying to move forward and so those kind of synergies they also see as as real opportunities thank you Joe Raphael do you have some final remarks on this before we go to a break yes effectively I agree it's very important yes to to develop this disruptive technology toward synthetic fuels but one point which is very important to have in between industry and academia is also technology supplier in order to to go quickly to to the upscaling of the technology so I think I would say when we have a good idea it's very important to think with the possibility to integrate quite quickly in our process technology supplier in order to go quickly toward the solution thank you so much and I have to thank our industry collaborators I benefited as a young faculty member I benefited tremendously from this conversations throughout the years and it's also thanks to the the willingness of you to come and join these discussions conversations that we are able to to move forward so with that I thank again Raphael de Gaulle, Jules Bergerson and Jennifer Port for the outstanding presentations introduction to the challenges and the problems and also for being willing to then interact with us on this panel discussion I think at least from my perspective I have more questions than answers but that's what this discussion should be all about and I look forward to working with many of us in the community in order to address some of the challenges that were presented in this panel with that thank you so much again and I will pass the button back to Richard okay thank you Matteo and thank you Jennifer, Jules, Raphael a great panel, great discussion and we will continue I'm sure the conversations that we've had