MOSCOW (MRC) -- With a new project organization, BASF is bundling and accelerating its extensive cross-company activities to reduce its CO2 emissions by 25% by 2030 compared with 2018 and become climate neutral by 2050, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The unit, called “Net Zero Accelerator,” focuses on implementing and accelerating projects relating to low-CO2 production technologies, circular economy and renewable energies. “With the new project organization, we are continuing to accelerate and create more powerful structures within BASF to achieve our ambitious goals,” said Dr. Martin Brudermuller, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE. “This further step demonstrates the determination to drive forward our transformation to a climate-neutral company.”
The Net Zero Accelerator unit will be led by Dr. Lars Kissau as President, reporting directly to the Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors. Under Kissau’s leadership, existing and new projects to achieve the CO2 reduction targets will be launched and driven forward at corporate level worldwide in the future. The aim is to move the projects into the implementation phase over the next few years.
By pooling expertise around renewable energies, alternative raw materials and CO2 reduction technologies, BASF will increase the speed of implementation and achieve scaling effects more quickly, thus making an important contribution to climate protection. In parallel, the operating divisions will continue to work on divisional projects to implement BASF’s ambitious CO2 reduction targets.
Ongoing cross-company projects managed by the new unit include BASF’s activities in the field of circular economy such as ChemCyclingTM or CO2-free technologies such as methane pyrolysis.
Renewable energies are another field of activity. BASF has initiated various projects in this area and signed specific agreements in recent months. Examples include a contract with Vattenfall to acquire a 49.5% stake in the Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm with a total capacity of 1.5 gigawatts and a 25-yr electricity supply contract to purchase 186 megawatts of capacity from Orsted’s planned Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in the German North Sea.
The new project organization, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, will start on January 1, 2022, initially with around 80 employees.
As MRC reported earlier, BASF is strengthening its global catalyst development and helping customers to bring new products faster to the market. As part of this strategy, BASF is building a new pilot plant center at its Ludwigshafen site. The new Catalyst Development and Solids Processing Center will serve as a global hub for pilot-scale production and process innovations of chemical catalysts. The new building is scheduled for completion by mid-2024.
We remind that BASF aims is to electrify its production processes for basic chemicals, which are currently based on fossil fuels.
We also remind that in mid-February, BASF said it was restarting one of its steam crackers at its Ludwigshafen complex in Germany after operations were halted earlier that month due to a technical issue. The naphtha cracker produces ethylene and propylene, and is one of two crackers on the site. One has a production capacity of 420,000 metric tons/year, with the other"s capacity at 240,000 metric tons/year.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,868,160 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 18% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,138,510 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries.
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