As of 1st January 2025, BASF reports that its Performance Materials division has transitioned all its European plants into renewable electricity.
BASF defines performance materials as polymers that “can be modified to demonstrate excellent physical and chemical properties over conventional materials”, including “superior strength, hardness and heat, abrasion and corrosion resistance.”
Now the company has switched to renewable electricity for the compounding of Engineering Plastics, Polyurethanes and Thermoplastic Polyurethanes, and Specialty Polymers at nine production sites in total.
BASF Performance Materials also claims to source the glass fibres to reinforce its plastics from 3B Fibreglass, which uses solar panels to generate electricity and, in doing so, is said to have reduced its carbon emissions ‘significantly’. This reduced CO2 footprint is believed to have carried over into BASF’s products, and therefore to its customers.
The transition is also set to benefit the company’s value chain in the production of base polymers and other precursors for Engineering Plastics and Polyurethanes.
“Ludwigshafen, as the world’s largest integrated chemical complex, cannot switch completely to renewable electricity from one day to the next,” explained Alexander Weiser, senior vice president and head of BASF Performance Materials Europe. “Our own combined cycle gas power plants produce electricity and process steam with a 95% efficiency at emissions far below the average grid level.
“The switch at this site has to be done gradually and we, at Performance Materials, are a leading part of this transformation.”
Back in 2023, BASF and Vattenfall’s offshore windfarm on the Hollandse Kust Zuid launched its operations; it is now said to power ‘emission-free’ technologies at several European production sites. Similarly, BASF’s second largest site in Germany, Schwarzheide, now integrates a 24-megawatt capacity from solar energy.
In line with its plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 (compared to the base year 2018) and achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the company plans to keep converting all its global operations into renewable electricity ‘within the next few years’. It also plans to optimize its production processes and procurement of raw materials, as well as promote and implement a circular economy.
“As BASF, we want to enable our customers’ green transformation, and we believe it starts with us,” said Martin Jung, president of BASF’s Performance Materials division. “This is our ambition and the goal of #OurPlasticsJourney.
“The use of electricity from renewable sources such as wind or solar is necessary to achieve our climate targets.
“However, renewable electricity is not the only lever for reducing CO2 emissions. Green steam made from the electrification of processes and the use of alternative raw materials via the mass balance approach play an essential role in the transformation towards a sustainable chemical industry.”
We previously reported that BASF joined forces with SABIC and Linde to open what is described as the ‘world’s first’ demonstration plant to heat its large-scale steam cracking furnaces with renewable electricity. The partners anticipate that the move will reduce CO2 emissions by at least 90% compared to conventional technologies.
More recently, Graphic Packaging International entered into a virtual Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Zelestra to add renewable electricity to the European power grid. Generated by Zelestra’s José Cabrera and Socovos II projects, the electricity is set to have a combined total capacity of 83 megawatts (MWdc).
Another PPA with CE Rigmuir Limited was said to account for over half of Coveris’ electricity demand in the UK and cover the renewable energy requirements of 18 sites. The supply arrangement was scheduled to begin on 1st September 2024, supported by an onshore wind technology project with a capacity of 13.5 megawatts.
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