Finite Material Neutral

Our long-term sustainability ambition and guiding star is to become Finite Material Neutral, which is a very bold ambition. It reflects the areas where Perstorp has the greatest footprint from its operations. Becoming Finite Material Neutral means, for example, shifting away from all virgin fossil raw materials and energy, and over to renewable, recycled or recovered at all our production plants globally.

Perstorp works with the following focus areas to become Finite Material Neutral:

• Raw material – switch to 100 percent renewable, recycled or reclaimed raw materials.
• Energy – improve energy efficiency and use only renewable or recovered energy.
• Water – reduce our total water footprint and ensure that we do not affect the environment or human health negatively through our water use or water effluents.
• Waste – prevent, reduce, recycle and eliminate waste in all phases of its value chain.
• Catalysts – reduce our use of catalysts, and only use reclaimed or recycled catalysts.

Science Based Targets

The Science Based Targets initiative is a collaboration between Carbon Disclosure Project, the UN Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) which helps companies to set emissions reduction targets in line with the latest climate science and aligned with the Paris agreement.

The mass balance concept

Mass balance is an important mechanism to drive the large-scale transformation from virgin fossil raw materials towards renewable or recycled materials. We apply  Traceable Mass Balance which acknowledges the basic principles of mass balance but applies chemical and physical traceability.

Internal price on carbon emissions

Perstorp has implemented Internal Carbon Pricing for Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Internal Carbon Pricing is a way to future proof a company by driving investments which improves sustainability and reduces CO2 emissions. It is a mechanism to put an internal price on our CO2 emissions and take this into account in business cases and as the guiding principle for our decision making.

“Reaching our science-based targets will require big efforts, including reducing energy consumption at our production sites and shifting to renewable or recycled energy and raw materials sources,” says Anna Berggren, VP Sustainability at Perstorp Group. “The investments and decisions we make today will generate emissions in the long future. Therefore, we need to take informed decisions where this risk factor is taken into account to support our journey towards our targets in 2030 and beyond. Internal Carbon Pricing is one very concrete way to implement sustainability aspects into our financial decision making process.”

Sustainability Improvement investments

We have established a new investment category which is dedicated to investments in projects with sustainability benefits. This includes everything from large investment projects in our processes to smaller improvements such as installing more energy efficient windows and electric vehicle charging stations. This category is intended to enable investments that have sustainability benefits and will be an important driver towards our 2030 sustainability targets. Projects in this investment category can have lower ROI requirements to ensure we prioritize important sustainability-driven investments.

Project Air – Chemistry for climate neutrality

Project Air is an initiative to make the chemical industry climate neutral, with far-reaching benefits throughout value chains. Together with partners Fortum and Uniper, Perstorp will produce 200,000 tons of sustainable methanol for chemical manufacturing using circular production methods. This will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in various value chains by about 500,000 tonnes per year, corresponding to the annual emissions of around 340,000 new cars running on fossil fuel.