Who we are

Chemistry protects the climate

Climate change is one of the most urgent challenges facing society today.

BASF supports the objective of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. Above all, we want to combat climate change through our skills in applying innovative solutions to address new challenges. For BASF, climate protection is a key task and an essential part of our strategy.

Klimaschutz ist ein zentraler Bestandteil der BASF-Strategie. Bereits seit vielen Jahren reduziert das Unternehmen kontinuierlich seine CO2 Emissionen. Zur weiteren signifikanten Reduktion werden in der Forschung innovative Verfahren entwickelt wie zum Beispiel die Synthesegasdirektumwandlung als Baustein der Olefinsynthese. Olefine sind Zwischenprodukte beispielsweise bei der Produktion von Climate protection is a central component of the BASF strategy. For many years, the company has been continuously reducing its CO2 emissions. For further significant reduction innovative processes, such as the synthesis gas direct conversion for the synthesis of olefins, our research is developing. Olefins are intermediate substances, for the production of cleaning materials, aroma chemicals or superabsorbents. New process technologies and catalysts can reduce the carbon footprint of olefin production by up to 50 percent. Chemical laboratory technician Oliver Secosan controls the new plant for synthesis gas direct conversion.

Our climate protection goal

BASF wants to achieve CO₂-neutral growth until 2030. We aim to maintain total greenhouse gas emissions from our production sites (excluding emissions from sale of energy to third parties) and our energy purchases at the 2018 level (21.9 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents) while increasing production.

We want to reach our climate protection target and enable further reductions with plant optimization measures, by purchasing low-carbon energy, and with a research and development program to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions over the long term. We have bundled these measures in our global Carbon Management.

Climate protection is a central component of the BASF strategy. For many years, the company has been continuously reducing its CO2 emissions. For further significant reduction, innovative processes such as methane pyrolyse are being developed in research. BASF researchers have developed a new reactor concept so that hydrogen can be produced without CO2 emissions. Hydrogen is needed by the chemical industry in large quantities, for example for ammonia synthesis.In the new process, high-purity, granular carbon is produced as a by-product (photo). The implementation of the process on pilot scale is the next challenge for the BASF experts.

Reducing CO₂ emissions

In recent decades, BASF has already achieved considerable reduction in CO₂ emissions by optimizing energy generation and production processes as well as systematically reducing emissions of nitrous oxide. We continue these efforts and are also gradually replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources in our electricity purchasing. Moreover, to cut our greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, BASF researchers are intensively working on fundamentally new low-CO₂ emitting production processes.

Carbon management

We are optimistic that these processes can be implemented from 2030 onward. Our primary goal here: We want to prevent CO₂ emissions from occurring at all. Further options, such as the use of biomass, CO₂ or waste as a raw material for chemical production will also increasingly play a role. However, the potential of sustainably available biomass is finite.

For now, there are limits to the uses of CO₂, owing to the large amount of energy required.

Energy and Climate protection

Our climate protection goal

Our Carbon Management program