Sustainability

Climate Protection

As an energy-intensive company, we are committed to the efficient use of energy and global climate protection and support the Paris Climate Agreement. We pursue the goal of climate neutrality and promote low-emission chemistry to enable the green transformation of our customers. Our business activities generate greenhouse gas emissions from production, energy procurement and the upstream and downstream value chain, which have an impact on the climate. We are working to reduce these emissions along the entire value chain. This also creates business opportunities: Our climate neutrality strategy enables us to offer our customers products with a reduced product carbon footprint (PCF).

We support the objective of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Above all, we want to combat climate change through our skills in applying innovative solutions to address new challenges.

BASF is committed to economically efficient and ecologically effective global climate protection and supports the UN Sustainable Development Goal "Climate Action". This can only be successfully achieved together, in dialogue with policy and society, as well as in strong partnerships for climate protection.

Renewable Energy

BASF wants to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050 - a major goal. We want to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 25 percent by 2030 compared to 2018. This means that our demand for renewable energy will increase massively in the coming years. You can find more information on the BASF Renewable Energy GmbH website.

Steam crackers are the engines at the heart of the chemical industry. The high-temperature, gas-powered furnaces are essential for basic chemical production, but the process is energy-intensive and emits significant amounts of CO2. To address the climate and energy challenge, BASF, SABIC and Linde have inaugurated the world’s first demonstration plant for large-scale, electrically heated steam cracking furnaces in April 2024. Our goal for this project: Using renewable energy in this process and with that reducing CO2 emissions of one of the most energy-intensive production processes in the chemical industry by at least 90% compared to technologies commonly used today. In the eFurnace demonstration plant, two heating concepts are being tested in parallel: direct heating, where the electric current is directly supplied to the process pipes inside the reactor, and indirect heating, using radiant heat from heating elements surrounding the pipes. The prototype is fully integrated into the steam crackers at the Ludwigshafen site and is unique in this scale.

Climate-smart technologies

Ten basic chemical production technologies cause the majority of BASF's emissions - but they are also an indispensable starting point for all innovative products that enable our customers to protect the climate and make our everyday lives easier.

Emission reduction along the value chain

Continuous improvement is a core element of our corporate culture. We optimize our Verbund with integrated energy concepts or minimize the loss of valuable carbon atoms to CO₂, to name just two examples.