In China, around 15 new coal-based Coal-to-Olefins (CTO) facilities are scheduled to be constructed over the next five years. The combined production capacity would reach 12.00 mil mt/year. As construction of CTO projects would be accelerated in the future, three effects including "Innovation of new-type energy storage technology", "Carbon reduction by using green hydrogen" and "Extension of industry chain from upstream to downstream" are expected.

In particular, the project would focus on the innovation of technology to enhance productivity of aging facilities. Improvement of energy efficiency to benchmark levels and expansion of production capacity are expected to be realized by remodeling existing facilities.

In addition, the project would try to expand to the system where green power and green hydrogen are combined. Many newly constructed projects would mainly produce new materials by leveraging green energy. Shanxi province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are forecast to account for over 90% of the total CTO production capacity of the new facilities.

Further, production of high-value added and differentiated products would be expanded. Upstream industry including coal mining, facility production and development of new chemical materials, and downstream industry such as logistics and transportation would be consolidated around the CTO facility projects. The aim is to develop comprehensive chemical production projects using coal as feedstocks.