The plant-level decarbonization pathways and mitigation cost of global oil refineries

The ever-expanding oil refining sector, a significant source of industrial emissions, is pursuing decarbonization aligned with the 1.5-degree climate change goal. Despite the discussion at national and global levels, the success of implementation hinges on technically and economically feasible mitigation action at individual plants. Here we develop a plant-level low-carbon pathway model for the oil refining industry by integrating the operating details of refineries (plant status, processing units, age, configuration, etc) and dynamic costs of low-carbon technologies. We find that global oil refining industry can achieve substantial decarbonization through carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) and clean hydrogen production technologies, concentrated on deep conversion refineries. The large differences in the distribution of age and configuration of refineries across regions lead to heterogeneous decarbonization pathways. In China, 57.6%~58.6% of mitigation costs for deep conversion refineries are associated with decarbonization technologies on furnaces and boilers, especially oxy-combustion CCS, while in the United States, over 40% of mitigation costs for such refineries are linked to biomass gasification. Consequently, mitigation costs per ton of CO₂ for deep conversion refineries in the United States are only 68.6%~74.8% of those in China. Simultaneously shortening the retrofitting cycle and using bio-crude oil can further enhance cumulative mitigation by 52.6 Gigatonnes and achieve negative CO₂ emissions in the oil refining industry. Our results provide cost-effective insights into the diverse and feasible mitigation strategies of individual refineries and accelerate climate action.