Climate protection

Industry, science, politics and society are being called on to curb global greenhouse gas emissions and make more efficient use of available resources. BASF’s contribution to these aims takes a two-fold approach: We are constantly working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our production. Furthermore, we offer our customers products for climate friendly technologies which reduce emissions when they are used. For us, these are the drivers of profitable growth with climate protection.

Strategy

Climate protection is one of the main challenges faced by society. BASF is committed to ambitious global climate protection that rapidly implements existing, economically-viable solutions. We invest in research and development in order to improve the cost-effectiveness of new climate protection solutions. At the same time, solutions need to be developed for adapting to the unavoidable consequences of climate change. Against this backdrop, we are committed to initiatives such as “Seal the Deal” and the U.N.’s Nairobi Work Program.

Climate protection is part of our sustainability strategy. We have set ourselves specific implementation goals which we are rigorously pursuing. These are based on a worldwide action plan for energy efficiency and climate protection. In 2008, BASF was the first globally operating industrial company to appoint a Climate Protection Officer.

We seize market opportunities with our climate protection products – product groups that when used save at least twice as much CO₂ as is emitted during their production and disposal. In 2008, these products accounted for around €6 billion, or 10%, of BASF’s sales. Our climate protection strategy was once again recognized with a listing in the prestigious Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) in 2009, ranking BASF first in the materials sector.

For information on emissions certificates, see Other risk areas

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Greenhouse gas emissions in the chemical business (1,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year)
	GWP factor *	Baseline 2002	2006	2007	2008	2009
* GWP factor: global warming potential of the individual gases compared with CO2 ** Energy-related CO2 emissions cover both direct emissions arising from the ­generation of electricity and steam as well as indirect emissions from the ­acquisition and sale of electricity and steam. *** Halogenated fluorocarbons (HFC) and perfluorocarbons (PFC); calculated using the GWP factors of the individual components (IPCC 1995) **** Specific greenhouse gas factor = metric tons of greenhouse gases per metric ton of sales product
CO2 **	1	18,236	20,250	21,433	20,727	19,622
N2O	310	6,407	4,602	5,963	6,294	9,553
CH4	21	10	12	21	15	12
HFC ***	140–11,700	61	121	96	69	74
PFC ***	6,500–9,200	0	0	0	0	0
SF6	23,900	0	2	1	2	1
		24,714	24,987	27,514	27,107	29,262
spec. GHG-factor ****		0.897	0.786	0.749	0.770	0.898