Sinopec to harvest more heat from earth

State-owned Sinopec Group's interest in geothermal energy has grown as it seeks to diversify beyond oil and gas production.

Sinopec Star Petroleum Ltd, China Petrochemical's geothermal energy development arm, said it would come up with a plan to create 20 smokeless cities, replacing coal with geothermal energy, covering 100 million sq m in the 13th Five-Year Plan(2016-20) period.

Sinopec has geothermal business in 16 provinces so far, covering a total area of 40 million square meters. That is equivalent of 1.16 million tons of standard coal each year - reducing carbon dioxide emissions by three million tons.