CEFIC, the European Chemicals Industry Council, has released a report informing its members of plans to becoming a ‘carbon neutral’ industry by 2050.
It said the chemical industry’s ambition is to play a leading role in the transformation of the European economy to low-carbon creating innovative climate friendly solutions for its processes through chemical products.
The report, ‘Low Carbon Energy and Feedstock for the European Chemical Industry’, explores how the chemical industry can become carbon neutral by 2050.
Green Eco-factory concept
Marco Mensink, Cefic Director General, said: “Many promising low-carbon technologies are available at a relatively advanced stage of development. The industry will need to find the way to overcome the investment, raw material and energy challenges for them to be implemented on a large scale in Europe.”
Kurt Wagemann, Executive Director of DECHEMA said: “The implementation of the technologies investigated in this study would allow for a very significant reduction of Carbon Dioxide emissions of the chemical industry by 2050 even under the least ambitious scenario.”
The DECHEMA study analyses technological options available for the chemical industry and outlines the conditions necessary to facilitate the transition of the European chemical industry to carbon neutrality. Besides giving a first full overview of all available technologies for the main chemical production processes, it describes what is needed to refurbish the industrial base in Europe, in a world currently benefiting in cost-terms from shale gas and low oil prices.
It suggested low-carbon electricity in much larger volumes and at competitive prices; availability of renewable feedstocks; fiscal incentives to modernise ageing production facilities and equipment and research into new chemical technologies that help overcome these challenges.
CEFIC promoted the industry’s progress having halved its energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, but producing chemicals remains one of the most energy intensive industrial processes.
