Climate Neutral Player
REPowerEU impacts our industry; we are working hard to help Europe meet its goals.
Kristof May
Regulatory Affairs Manager
Energy Consumption
Primary energy consumption remained at roughly the same level as in 2020 (86.0% in 2021 compared to 86.1% in 2020), taking 2001 as the reference year.
Almost stable primary fuel energy consumption
Electricity and Steam Consumption
The weighted average electricity consumption stayed on the same level as 2020, while the weighted average steam consumption, a new KPI introduced in the third Sustainability Programme, declined slightly. The latter is most likely caused by the higher operating levels of the production installations.
Almost stable electricity and steam consumption
Grid Balancing
Increasing renewable electricity production with wind and solar also raises volatility. This requires more support solutions to maintain stability in the electricity grid to prevent black-outs. Chlor-alkali production units can partly contribute to this, but this capability is limited by products needed for customers and the limited ability to store chlorine.
In our third Sustainability Programme, we report on the grid balancing support delivered by members as a percentage of the total installed electricity demand capacity. In 2021, 16% of the installed electrical capacity was available for grid balancing, which is a slight decrease from the 2020 level of 16.3%.
Slight decrease in electrical capacity
Carbon footprint reduction
The EU27 has the ambition to become climate neutral by 2050. Our carbon footprint is presented in our new Eco-profile study. Since we will not publish an Eco-profile study every year, we now measure progress on our carbon footprint reduction in our third Sustainability programme. We report the scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions from member production units for chlor-alkali and hydrogen. In 2021, greenhouse gas emissions reduced by around 0.8% compared to 2020, so there is still some way to go to reach our goal of zero by 2050.
Slight reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
Hydrogen use
Euro Chlor produces around 270,000 tonnes/year of hydrogen on average. This year, hydrogen utilisation increased from 83.2% in 2020 to 85.4% in 2021. We are gently moving towards our ambition to use 100% by 2030.
2.2% increase in hydrogen use versus last year
*Note: Figure for hydrogen vented varies from that under Competitive Supplier due to difference in products covered and different reporting lines.
Read more in our paper report here.