Eine klimaneutrale Chemie ist möglich. Rede von Covestro-CTO Klaus Schäfer.

The chemical industry is one of the largest industrial emitters of greenhouse gases. Achieving greenhouse gas neutrality therefore poses an immense challenge for the chemical industry. For the production of basic chemicals, we need a lot of energy. Today, a large part of this energy is still provided on the basis of fossil resources. In addition, the chemical processes we use to manufacture the products themselves cause greenhouse gas emissions. Our companies have been able to reduce these emissions drastically in some areas, as Mr. Große Entrup has already shown. However, reducing them across the board requires considerable technical effort. Furthermore, the chemical industry has the unique characteristic that the products of organic chemistry, with which the greatest value is created, are consistently based on plastic, the element that, after incineration or decomposition of these products in nature, enters the atmosphere as CO2. Therefore, the raw material base of the industry, which today in Europe is largely based on the petroleum product naphtha, must also be defossilized. The industry will have to act on several fields of action to achieve the goal of greenhouse gas neutrality by the middle of the century. Which measures are possible on this path and how far they can lead have been analyzed by Dächer and Future Camp on behalf of the VCI in the study we are presenting today. You can see this path to 2050 in the overview graphic.

The year 2020 serves as the starting point of the analysis. Then, the greenhouse gas emissions of the chemical industry in Germany from its own energy generation, from electricity purchases from the grid, from processes, and from the carbon in the products will total 113 million tons. Based on this, the analysis describes the path to greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 in three phases. They are to be understood as different levels of ambition. The paths differ through specific basic assumptions. These influence the extent to which the chemical industry can realize CO2-reducing technologies. The study first describes a reference point, which you see shown in blue. It shows how far the German chemical industry can come if it continues to produce with today's technologies and further increases its efficiency in all areas. The industry would continue its investments in plants at the current level of around seven billion euros per year. However, it would not additionally invest in new process technologies. In the reference scenario, the German chemical industry achieves a greenhouse gas reduction of 27 percent by 2050 relative to 2020. This is made possible by companies further increasing the efficiency of existing plants and, above all, reducing residual amounts of coal as fuel in their own power plants. The assumed end of coal-fired power generation in 2038 also contributes significantly to the emission reduction. As a result, the CO2 content of the electricity that the industry purchases from outside decreases. As you can see from the course of the blue line, the emission level of the industry only decreases slowly after 2030. This makes it clear that the chemical industry has already made high preliminary achievements in recent decades. I repeat what Mr. Große Entrup said: from 1990 to 2017, greenhouse gas emissions from system energy demand and process emissions, i.e., from the processes with which we manufacture the products, were reduced by 48 percent. The potential for further optimization of conventional processes is almost exhausted. But that also means that without a fundamental implementation of new technologies, we will remain far from greenhouse gas neutrality.

The reduction of greenhouse gases from 2030 onwards can be significantly stronger. For this, the German chemical industry must, in addition to the measures in the reference scenario, also invest heavily in new process technologies for basic chemicals. We call this path the technology path. We already know today that these new process technologies will have a very high demand for renewable electricity and will require considerable investments in new plants. In the real world, however, the availability of both factors will be limited. Therefore, we calculated this path under two constraints. First, that a maximum of 225 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity is available for the chemical industry. To put this in perspective, that corresponds to about the total amount of renewable electricity produced in Germany in this year or last year. Second, that companies are able to increase their investment budgets for new plants very significantly. With these assumptions, a CO2 reduction of 61 percent can be achieved by 2050. First plants of the next generation would be installed when the corresponding technologies are mature, which we expect around 2035. They will reduce CO2 emissions in chemical production from the beginning of the 2040s, as you can see from the course of the middle curve in the graphic. Energy-related emissions are reduced according to the energy transition. Process emissions and emissions from the plastic of the products can be reduced by the chemical industry through the new technologies. However, the largest source of greenhouse gases remains the use of fossil raw materials and combustion processes.

Further progress is achieved by the industry using improved mechanical and chemical recycling to reuse plastics as raw material for the production of basic chemicals. This is, in my view, a very important point. For the construction of the new plants for the six basic chemical products examined in the study, the chemical industry must invest at least an additional 15 billion euros by 2050. Possible development costs that would arise by 2035 are not included. To close the gap to complete greenhouse gas reduction, the third path, called greenhouse gas neutrality, dropped the limitations regarding the availability of renewable electricity and all economic restrictions. Here, the study authors determined which technologies must be implemented to what extent by 2050, how high the resulting electricity demand will be, and what investments are required to achieve this. Technologies are introduced as soon as their use achieves CO2 savings, regardless of whether they are economically viable. From 2035 to 2050, all conventional processes for basic chemicals are replaced by alternative processes without CO2 emissions. Again, the largest reductions occur only in the 2040s. The downside of this approach: the new electricity-based processes would cause the electricity demand of the chemical industry to rise to over 600 terawatt-hours annually from the mid-2030s. That corresponds to the entire current electricity production in our country. Costs also rise rapidly. Just for the production of the six products examined in the study, companies would have to invest an additional 45 billion euros between 2020 and 2050. Moreover, the products manufactured with the new technologies will be significantly more expensive than currently produced products.

Ladies and gentlemen, the study shows overall that a largely greenhouse gas-neutral chemical production in Germany by 2050 is technologically conceivable. New methods of circular economy, CO2-free hydrogen production, and the use of CO2 as a raw material make this possible. However, the extent to which the chemical industry can realize this technical potential depends on several factors. A basic prerequisite for companies to bring alternative process technologies to market, i.e., to also bring the products to market, is their economic viability. The more ambitious the goal of greenhouse gas neutrality is pursued, the more the associated costs rise. Companies can only drive the transformation to zero emissions if they remain competitive in every phase and find optimal framework conditions. This means, among other things, that the chemical industry must have access to gigantic amounts of renewable electricity from today's perspective, and for the competitiveness of the location, lower electricity costs are crucial. In the study, the calculations for economic viability were carried out under the assumption that electricity costs will be 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. As you all know, we are far from that today. Only under these conditions is economic viability of the processes before 2050 even conceivable. Electricity costs that are 50 percent higher, i.e., 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, would make economic viability for most processes a reality only well after 2050. The current relief and cap rules will therefore not be sufficient to create competitive electricity prices for energy-intensive industry. Politics will increasingly have to take further measures to dampen electricity costs for industry. And further framework conditions must also contribute supportively so that basic chemicals can be converted to low-emission processes. If the new processes are to be ready by 2040, they must be developed to market maturity by then. Exemption rules for plants on a technical scale and for process engineering pilot projects should help accelerate this progress in development. Moreover, according to the analysis, new plants cannot initially compete economically with older, depreciated plants, both domestically and abroad. The additional costs for products manufactured with alternative processes can hardly be passed on to customers given world market prices for basic chemicals. It is therefore also the task of politics to supportively accompany the transformation of the chemical industry. If it promotes the process both in the development phase and in the market introduction phase, certain processes could even come into use earlier.