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Biofuels can reduce CO2-emissions. However, economic, environmental and social challenges become apparent. A sustainable, internationally accepted system of certification can help.  |
Dialogue and exchange are the keys to success of far-reaching innovations, such as renewable energies. In order to promote dialogue, BASF hosted a congress "Ways to sustainability - The role of renewable raw materials" in Berlin. |
BASF is showing consistent commitment to using valuable fossil raw materials and sources of energy as efficiently as possible. Less than five percent of fossil raw materials go into material use by the chemical industry. Nevertheless: as "The Chemical Company", BASF takes its responsibility for sustainable resource management very seriously. It does this in three respects:
- through product innovations with which high energy conservation potential can be realized for example in the areas of housing and mobility,
- through an efficient energy supply of its production plants for example on the basis of combined heat and power,
- and through the use of renewable raw materials for producing chemical products wherever it is possible and reasonable.
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Fossil resources are not going to be available indefinitely. This is why we, like the whole of industry and society, have to become less dependent on them in the long term. This transition has to be fashioned economically, ecologically and socially acceptable. Industry and society are faced with three great tasks:
- We have to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil resources in order to manage as long as possible with the existing stocks - time that we must not leave unused but invest in research and the development of new technologies.
- On this basis, we have to find an appropriate replacement for the fossil resources in the long term.
- We must fashion the transition in such a way that we remain competitive economically and maintain employment.
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At about two million metric tons, the renewable raw materials' proportion of organic chemical production in Germany is currently approximately ten percent. However, olefins and aromatics are the most important feedstocks for the majority of value-adding chains in the chemical industry today. They are produced mainly by steamcracking naphtha. However, natural gas is also suitable as an alternative raw material, since a complete transition of chemical production to renewable raw materials is not possible in the medium term. BASF is investing 100 million euros in its research work in the field of "raw material change" in the years from 2006 to 2008.
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