BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world, with a revenue of around €68,900bn in 2023. In August 2024, the company released its strategic roadmap toward carbon neutrality in 2050, stating it wants to be at the ‘forefront of the much-needed sustainability transformation in plastics’.
Circular Economy
BASF has teamed up with industry partners to transform reclaimed materials, such as denim, clothes, discarded coffee grounds, paper cups and chopsticks. BASF uses a process with binders that merge small particles of waste material and turns them into strong, stable composites. The low emission fiber bonding technologies are called Acrodur®, acForm® and Acronal®.
Sharkskin technology for aircraft
With partners at Lufthansa Technik, BASF have developed sharkskin technology which is a film added to the exterior that contains millions of microscopic ‘riblets’. This makes the plane more aerodynamic, therefore it uses less fuel and emits less CO2. On a long-haul flight, this cuts more than 1000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.
Renewable energy
BASF is investing in the world’s biggest subsidy free offshore wind farm, therefore generating its own renewable energy rather than relying on partners.
Reducing the CO2 impact of basic chemicals
Ten basic chemicals, which are the foundation for 20,000 chemical products such as hydrogen and methanol, are responsible for around 70% of greenhouse gas emissions from the European chemical industry. To mitigate this, BASF is working on an electrically heated steam cracker furnace for the production of clean hydrogen. Researchers have also developed a process to produce methanol without any greenhouse gas emissions.
Reporting standards using PACT and TfS
A PCF is the carbon footprint of a product from ‘cradle to gate’, providing the total sum of GHG emissions of products. PCFs help to quantify and manage carbon emissions, particularly scope 3 emissions.
BASF has partnered with WBCSD and 60 other companies to develop the PACT Pathfinder Framework, which takes a cross-sectoral approach to exchange primary data-based PCFs.
Through this framework and TfS (Together for Sustainability), BASF can calculate and exchange primary PCF data for thousands of products, with hundreds of suppliers and customers.
By the end of 2024, BASF aims to have all the most important suppliers onboarded.
Source: Foundation for Future Supply Chain
Author: Julia Swales
