Working towards a net-zero future
One of the most urgent challenges facing our society today is climate change, so reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout food the value chain is crucial. Evonik Animal Nutrition reduces upstream and downstream emissions: we offer products and services to help the animal feed and farming sector achieve significant emissions reductions, and our GHG strategy outlines our commitment to improving the carbon footprint of our own operations, to ultimately reach a net-zero future.
Our contribution
Our targets to reduce harmful emissions are in line with the Paris Agreement, the international treaty to keep the global warming to well below 2°C. Consequently, Evonik has committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which ensures our contribution to the development of science-based emissions reductions targets in line with the latest climate science.
Evonik Animal Nutrition is implementing several GHG reduction measures to ensure the carbon footprint of our amino acids and functional feed additives remains as low as possible.
Our global asset strategy is designed to ensure that the three backward-integrated methionine plants in the Americas, Europe and Asia, offer cost and carbon optimized MetAMINO® (DL-methionine) to customers worldwide.
In Asia, the planned process optimization at our MetAMINO® production plant in Singapore, will improve the carbon footprint of the amino acid produced there by six percent.
In the Americas, the investment in backward integration in Mobile, Alabama, will see a seven percent reduction in locally produced MetAMINO® once complete in 2024.
GHG reduction targets
Evonik has committed to a 25% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions between 2021 and 2030, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. A Scope 3 target is in development.
To address our Scope 1 emissions, Evonik is investing more than €3 billion in Next Generation Technologies by 2030. These technologies will optimize our production processes to reduce emissions across our sites.
For example, at Evonik Animal Nutrition’s MetAMINO® production site in Singapore, we are implementing an electrolysis unit, which electricity to generate green hydrogen energy supply for our operations.
Evonik Animal Nutrition is rapidly increasing the use of renewable electricity. We will use contracts with energy suppliers, renewable energy certificates and power purchase agreements to use renewable electricity at all our production sites.
By the end of 2023, four of our six production sites (Blair, Nebraska, USA; Castro, Brazil; Antwerp & Wesseling Verbund, and Leon, Spain) will be operating on 100% green electricity. Our site in Mobile, Alabama, USA will follow by the end of 2026, after which we aim to increase the use of green electricity at the Singapore site.
Scope 3 emissions make up the majority of most companies’ emissions inventories.
Evonik is using its influence to encourage suppliers to reduce their own GHG emissions and asking them to provide us with product-specific carbon footprint data.
All raw material suppliers with a total Evonik annual procurement spend of over €100,000 will be covered by a Together for Sustainability (TfS) assessment by 2025. TfS assessments allow chemical companies to report, assess and communicate their sustainability and safety performance to all other TfS members.
Evonik Animal Nutrition is continuing to develop ways to recycle or valorize byproducts, such as ammonia and acrylic acid, to reduce emissions associated with waste management.
And over the long term, we are exploring the potential of employing alternative raw materials with a lower GHG footprint.
