Covestro Group at a Glance – Climate Neutrality

Energy Usage

For an energy-intensive company like ours, the reduction in the amount of energy we use plays a key role in efforts to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Covestro’s energy usage includes the primary energy used in production and during electricity and steam generation by the company as well as additionally acquired quantities of electricity, steam, refrigeration energy, and process heat (secondary energy). The secondary energy is calculated back to arrive at the equivalent primary energy usage required to generate them. This takes into account the energy lost while distributing these forms of energy. All told, these figures make up Covestro’s equivalent primary energy consumption.

The use of energy and materials is closely related to our production volume. Unlike for GHG emissions, our target-setting process focuses in particular on the specific energy usage of the sites we define as main production sites. These are responsible for more than 95% of our total energy usage. In support of our climate neutrality goal, we want to halve specific energy usage at our production sites by the year 2030 compared with the 2005 base year and in this way make a contribution to our absolute GHG reduction target.

Our continued long-term positive trend indicates an overall 38.9% improvement in energy efficiency compared to the 2005 base year as shown in the following figure.

Changes in specific energy usage at main production sites

(annual change in specific primary energy usage per metric ton of product compared with the 2005 base year – presented in %)¹

Compared to the previous year, equivalent primary energy usage at these sites decreased by 7.7% and the production volume by 9.6%. This means that the equivalent primary energy usage for a given production volume (energy efficiency) was up 2.3% from the previous year due to production utilization.

Covestro’s STRUCTese® (Structured Efficiency System for Energy) system played a key role in permanently improving our specific energy usage. The energy efficiency system developed by Covestro compares actual energy usage in production with the realistic potential optimum. Eliminating inefficiencies results in permanent energy savings. STRUCTese® includes various steps that enable the identification of improvement measures – from analysis to monitoring to benchmarking. These measures are known at Covestro as STRUCTese® projects. The system is already being used in many of our energy-intensive production facilities around the world and will be implemented in other facilities going forward.

For example, in the reporting year, we reused considerable volumes of low-pressure steam in our polyurethane production processes at the site in Baytown, Texas (United States). Primary energy usage was therefore cut by more than 64,600 MWh, which is the equivalent of reducing emissions by some 12,800 metric tons of CO₂.

Moreover, Covestro carried out various other projects in fiscal 2022, resulting in annual savings of 113,300 MWh of primary energy, or 29,900 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. In addition, pro-rated savings from projects completed in the previous year amounted to 32,300 MWh of primary energy, and 8,300 metric tons of CO₂ and were realized in fiscal 2022. Combined, all the projects implemented since the introduction of STRUCTese® have resulted in lasting reductions totaling 2.6 million MWh of primary energy and around 770,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year.

We also collect data on our total energy usage at all environmentally relevant production sites. In the year 2022, total energy usage in the Group was down 6.7% year-over-year.