Our Carbon Management

We want to live up to our responsibility for climate protection. One way we do this is with our products, which enable our customers to lower CO₂ emissions. But that is not all: We also become more efficient in our production and energy use, we increasingly make use of electricity from renewable sources and we develop fundamentally new low-emission technologies.

In recent decades, BASF has already achieved a 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 we 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.

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.

The framework conditions will also be decisive for the successful implementation of new climate-friendly production processes. New technologies require very large volumes of renewable energy at competitive prices. Sectors like the chemical industry, which compete in an international market, cannot pass on the additional costs caused by low-CO₂ technologies to their customers. Therefore, globally comparable carbon pricing – or at least at the G20 level – is the best solution to ensure competitiveness.

How can we build a more climate-friendly chemical industry? 

What our researchers say