Low Carbon Chemicals

Front cover of Imperial's White paper on Insetting-based decarbonsation of the Chemical Industry — White Paper - Front cover

Our latest White Paper on Insetting-Based Decarbonisation for the Chemical Industry

The chemicals industry is essential to modern society and the global economy, but it is also a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But progress to tackle these emissions is slow, largely due to high capital costs, long asset lifecycles, complex supply chains and insufficient regulation.

The resulting ambiguity creates a significant barrier for investment into decarbonisation throughout the value chain.

In our latest White Paper we examine one promising solution to accelerate decarbonisation through a market-based-mechanism (MBM).

It proposes a solution based on a Book and Claim (B&C) Chain of Custody (CoC) model to connect final consumers to chemical and product manufacture throughout the value chain.
Upstream producers, who are willing to invest in creating low carbon molecules through technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage can ‘book’ these into a ledger system to distinguish volumes of low-carbon production from conventional manufacture.
The concept avoids the need for complex physical tracking and material segregation, through the establishment of industry baselines and environmental attribute certificates (EACs) established to seven principles - ensuring EACs are robust, reliable and trustworthy - which assign a decarbonisation benefit to the volume of low or zero carbon.
Producers of consumer products at the end of the value chain can ‘claim’ these credits, for example as a proportion message on a cola bottle such as ‘made from 10% low carbon plastic’.