The future of fossil fuels, chemicals, and feedstocks: Outlining a research agenda on the role of China in the global petrochemical industry

Abstract

Petrochemical production is tightly entangled with fossil fuel extraction and constitutes the primary driver of oil demand growth. Therefore, scholars have increasingly started exploring the linkages between fossil fuels and chemicals, tracing their importance for the political economy of energy transitions. A defining feature in the global petrochemical industry is that the majority of the recent and ongoing build-out of production capacity is located in China. Therefore, the outlook of the Chinese petrochemical industry is critical to the prospects of national as well as global energy transitions. In this paper, we review and contextualize the Chinese expansion, distilling key dimensions that shape the prospects of petrochemical transitions: i) Chinese political economy dynamics and the role of industrial policy; ii) the tensions between petrochemical expansion, decarbonization, and pollution; and iii) ramifications for the international political economy of petrochemicals. On this basis, we propose a research agenda that explores these three areas in more depth, outlining key issues for an increasingly important trend that shapes reconfigurations in the global energy order.