Japanese trading house Marubeni delivered "carbon-neutral" ethylene to the port of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan today for Taiwanese state-owned refiner CPC.
Marubeni did not disclose the sales price of the "carbon-neutral" ethylene. The sales volume is slightly above 9,000t, a CPC official told Argus.
Carbon credits were used to offset carbon emissions across the entire supply chain, from production in the US state of Texas to shipment to CPC's customer site in Kaoshiung, Marubeni said. Details of the customer are unavailable. Marubeni and CPC obtained the carbon credits from Australian investment bank Macquarie by investing in an environmental preservation project in Indonesia.
CPC operates 600,000 b/d of refining capacity across its Dalin and Taoyuan plants in Taiwan. Its Linyuan petrochemical complex in Kaoshiung can produce around 1.1mn t/yr of ethylene.
The reason for the purchase is not because of a shortage of ethylene but to participate in this carbon-neutral trend, the CPC official said.
Marubeni sees the global trend towards decarbonisation gradually raising demand for "carbon-neutral" ethylene. Ethylene is used as a feedstock for most of Japan's major petrochemical products.
Marubeni has set a target to become carbon neutral by 2050. It previously used carbon credits for a transatlantic ethylene shipment, covering the voyage of a 21,020m³ carrier from Texas to Antwerp in Belgium.
