SABIC, a global leader in the chemical industry, has reaffirmed its commitment to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 with global business figures and policy makers at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
In line with this year’s theme of ‘Working Together, Restoring Trust’, SABIC used its reception to expand on how it will meet the 2050 carbon neutrality target, highlighting its Circular Carbon Economy (CCE) strategy. The session was hosted at the company’s iconic Innovation in the Circular Economy House (ICEhouse™), a concept-structure that presents new possibilities for building in closed-loop carbon systems that reduce energy and material waste.
SABIC Vice Chairman and CEO, Yousef Al-Benyan, said: “At SABIC, we recognize the strategic role our industry must play in reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. We know we are working against the clock, and as we outlined during our event, SABIC is committed to taking action to accelerate our journey towards carbon neutrality.”
SABIC’s CCE strategy is a vital component of its Carbon Neutrality Roadmap, which sets out the company’s strategy to decarbonize all owned operations by mid-century in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Launched in October of last year at the inaugural Saudi Green Initiative Forum, the roadmap provides SABIC’s most ambitious sustainability framework to date, bringing together the various elements of SABIC’s sustainability. The roadmap identifies five pathways towards total decarbonisation – Energy Efficiency; Renewable Energy; Electrification; Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage; and Green/Blue Hydrogen.
SABIC’s vision of a Circular Carbon Economy would be established by creating a system where all value chains of carbon-containing products loop back on themselves; carbon-containing gases could either be captured before escaping into the atmosphere or converted into durable goods rather than being burned as fuel. SABIC is working to deploy a strategy of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Remove to work towards this system:
- Reduce: Finding ways to directly lower the amount of carbon released into the air. SABIC is building renewable power into its operations – working towards interim targets of 4 GW of renewables by 2025 and 12 GW by 2030. For example, SABIC commenced the supply of 300GWh of wind power to its Geleen, Netherlands, site in January.
- Reuse: Taking gases that would otherwise be released into the air and incorporating them into solid or liquid carbon products. A SABIC joint venture recently became the first company in the Middle East to produce certified circular methanol from captured and purified CO2.
- Recycle: Advocating for increased plastic recycling around the world. SABIC is stepping up efforts with its TRUCIRCLE™ solutions to accelerate a circular economy for plastics, including the scaling up of advanced recycling solutions and helping to reduce the incineration of used plastics or plastics entering the environment – for example, working last year with Microsoft to launch a mouse made from 20% mechanically recycled ocean plastic.
- Remove: Finding ways to remove CO2 that has already made its way into our atmosphere. SABIC has the world’s largest carbon dioxide capture and purification plant, run by one of our affiliates in Saudi Arabia.
During this Spring edition of the Davos meeting, SABIC has also collaborated with Dutch solar technology provider Solarge, to install 46 solar panels on the building’s roof to power auxiliary lighting inside the ICEhouse to further underline its commitment to renewable power as an essential contributor to the energy transition.
