Reducing our carbon footprint and increasing sustainable innovation

We will enable the transition to a low carbon economy. We will be Climate Positive, working closely with our customers to develop products that offer carbon saving benefits in use.

Our ingredients offer many sustainability benefits in use, including helping our customers and their consumers to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. Our Carbon Cover target means that by 2030 the use of our products will avoid four times the carbon emissions associated with our business. To achieve this target, we will:

• Discover and account for avoided emissions using our existing ingredients
• Develop innovative carbon-saving ingredients to meet our customers’ needs

Case study: Externally validated avoided emissions

In 2021 we identified five new case studies where emissions were avoided, including a new product launched in 2021. The emissions savings of this new product were revealed during its sustainability assessment, part of the new way of working for our innovation teams to support our Commitment.

The four other products were identified by our Carbon Cover working group, set up in 2021 to drive the discovery of new case studies and identify avoided emissions for larger product and application areas. The group assessed around 80% of our product portfolio for potential carbon savings in use, which led to our first multiproduct, multi-application assessment, encompassing all products sold by our Crop Protection, Plant Impact and Incotec businesses.

Our total avoided emissions in 2021 linked to the sales of ingredients from these case studies, and our product case studies validated in 2020 and 2019, is 951,000 tonnes CO2e. This leads to a carbon cover ratio of 0.8:1. All case studies were aligned with our existing methodology for quantifying and reporting avoided emissions, as externally validated by Avieco. 

Case study: 1.5°C science-based target validation

In July 2021 we became only the third major chemical company globally to have a 1.5°ºC science-based target validated. By the end of 2029 we will have reduced our operational (scope 1 and 2) emissions by 46.2% from a 2018 baseline. With the majority of our emissions within our supply chain, we also had our scope 3 target approved by the SBT initiative: to reduce our upstream scope 3 emissions by 13.5% over the same time frame. The focus here is to engage and work with suppliers to reduce emissions associated with sourcing raw materials alongside transportation and distribution of products to our customers. By taking action to achieve these targets within our operations and supply chain we can support our customers and enable them to meet their own GHG emission reduction targets.