Climate change and the petrochemical industry
Climate change is one of the most far-reaching environmental concerns the world faces today. While questions about the causes and consequences still remain, it is generally accepted that actions have to be taken.
The chemical industry is an energy-intensive industry in a highly competitive global environment. On average, about 9% of total production costs are due to energy use. For some chemicals, this ratio can rise up to 60%. Because of this, the chemical industry has already invested over many decades in energy efficiency improvement.
Whilst energy saving has been primarily economically motivated, the EU chemical industry is increasingly recognising the implications of potential actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the effects that these might have on their operations. In line with its Responsible Care approach to environment, health and safety, the EU chemical industry has taken early actions through innovation and better management to improve the energy efficiency of its processes. These actions have achieved an improvement in specific energy consumption of 20% since 1990.
Linked to certain economic and environment policy conditions, the EU chemical industry in 2001 set an objective of continuing to reduce emissions by 30% for the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases by the year 2010 (measured in CO2 equivalents, reference year 1990). This 30% objective equals approximately 100 MM t CO2 equivalent, representing 30% of the EU Kyoto reduction target. Such a reduction represents a difficult and challenging target which will require significant investment. Furthermore, it should be regarded as a "one-off" and should not be extrapolated further than 2010. This is primarily because the technological changes and process energy efficiency improvements are already pushing practical and theoretical limits.
In return for the current achievements and projected future progress, the EU chemical industry expects Member States and the European Commission to take into account the needs of industry and to provide a stable environment in which to do business. This is especially the case in the "permit and allowance" system created within the proposed EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which, whilst deliberately excluding the chemical sector, actually includes a significant proportion of it through the definition of "combustion installations".
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