Chemical Companies Innovating with Low Carbon Products, but Failing to Meet Paris Goals

A new report released Friday from CDP — the world’s largest platform for environmental data — warns that the chemicals industry must not be overlooked when it comes to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The sector is both a large energy user itself, responsible for an eighth of global industrial carbon emissions, and a crucial part of other industrial supply chains — almost 95% of manufactured products rely on chemicals in some form.

The new report says that despite positive progress in low-carbon technologies, the sector needs to urgently focus on its highly polluting processes, such as the manufacture of petrochemicals.

The new report, Catalyst for Change, analyzes 22 of the largest global chemical companies, which together have a total market capitalization of $626 billion and are responsible for a quarter of all emissions of the sector at 276 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.

The report reveals that the chemicals sector is making progress on climate risk but that rapid process innovations will be required in order for them to have any chance of aligning with the below 2°C goal set out by the Paris agreement.

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