Tianjin, China's fourth largest city relies more and more on the petrochemical industry for its economic development. The city government and Sinopec, China's largest state-owned chemical company have signed a new framework agreement according to which an additional 70 billion yuan (around 10.3 billion dollars) will be invested in key projects in Tianjin.

Repower EU is a plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and quickly adopt the green transition. Cefic has recently issued a statement along with a position paper sharing its views on the plan.

The Bacton Energy Hub project led by the UK North Sea Transition Authority is exploring the potential for a hydrogen-led energy hub in Bacton, Norfolk, UK. With this move, the project aims to offer a sustainable hydrogen supply.

With an aim to increase helium supply in the USA, Linde has entered into a long-term off-take agreement to recover the helium contained in Freeport LNG's production site in Texas. The company will also develop a new processing plant to purify and liquify the recovered helium.

Sekisui Chemical Co., INCJ, and Sekisui Bio Refinery Co. have completed the construction of a ‘waste-to-ethanol’ demo plant in Iwate, Japan which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a technology which has the potential to convert ‘industrial waste into ethanol’ on a large scale.

Hengli Petrochemical started up the world's largest stand-alone pure terephthalic acid (PTA) production plant at the end of June. According to PROCESS China, the new PTA-5 plant has an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons and is ready to be the third new plant to be started up in China this year.

A consortium comprising Johnson Matthey, Bekaert and TNO aims to improve green hydrogen production by optimizing the most important components of the electrolyzer. The move is expected to support the development of next-generation electrolyzers which will lead to lower electricity consumption and assist in cheaper hydrogen production.

KBR’s Rose supercritical Solvent De-Asphalting technology and Vacuum Distillation Unit have been selected by Taiwan’s CPC Corporation. Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide a license, basic engineering and proprietary equipment for its Rose technology as well as supply the engineering package for the upstream VDU.

Black & Veatch has secured a contract by Mitsubishi Power Americas and Magnum Development to provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for a first-of-its kind advanced clean energy storage project in Delta, Utah, USA. The new green hydrogen hub is expected to convert 220+ MW of renewable energy daily to 100 metric tons of green hydrogen which will be stored in two salt caverns.

Nova Chemicals and Enerkem have plans to advance the commercialization of its chemical recycling technology by developing a pilot-scale reactor system that converts syngas produced from used, non-recyclable plastics to feedstocks for virgin-grade plastics.