Remaining safe and competitive while becoming climate neutral…

Safety, competitiveness and climate neutrality; three major topics Euro Chlor has been addressing over the past year. Together with circularity, they form the four elements of the Euro Chlor Mid Century Strategy (MCS).

Keeping people safe, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using carbon neutral electricity, and finding solutions to become even more flexible in their operations; all of this is asked from an industry that has been significantly impacted by the European energy crisis. To support our membership, the Euro Chlor team has accelerated its work to tackle the consequences of the increasing energy price differences between the EU and other regions, and the limited reliable renewable energy availability. We are grateful for the excellent support of a newly created ‘Energy Crisis Team’, a sub-group of our Management Committee, who meet regularly to provide strategic advice on the key energy files and oversaw a new Cost Competitiveness study carried out by Argus Media. With support from Cefic, we are explaining the impact of the energy crisis at EU level to prevent this from becoming a roadblock in our ongoing Transition Pathway.

The pace at which the EU is proposing and adopting legislation to implement its Green Deal is faster than ever. Therefore, we have organised many additional meetings, amongst others on the universal PFAS REACH restriction proposal.

Potentially linked to the economic and regulatory challenges faced by our membership, our sustainability results this year are unsatisfactory. Many of our safety indicators have been negatively impacted, so we must further step up our efforts to reverse a potential downward trend in process safety. On the positive side, we have reduced our carbon footprint and transport incidents.

The Euro Chlor team remains motivated and ready to face our many challenges, supported by an engaged Management Committee. The latter started to meet more regularly to focus on the safety, energy, competitiveness and circularity topics, whilst following up on some exciting new communications tools that show the benefits of the entire chlor-alkali value chain.

I thank the whole Euro Chlor team and our active members for their invaluable contribution and invite you all to read about our 2022-2023 activities throughout this Industry Review.