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Our ambition is to be among the global petrochemical leaders in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and a key player in carbon capture through the production of materials with renewable, biobased raw materials. By 2030, we seek to reduce scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 15%; and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
We reduced the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions by more than 17% between 2002 and 2020, achieving 94% of the long-term goal set on climate change. In 2021, we created the industrial decarbonization program and we could map and approve projects that contribute to the reduction of 285 thousand tons of CO2 from 2022.
We have adopted a number of actions to encourage energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. As a result, over the last 13 years, we have been able to reduce CO2 emissions by around 17%. This effort will support meeting our 2030 intermediate goal of reducing total greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent from the baseline of 10.8 million in 2019 to 9.2 million tons of CO2.
Our emissions compensation strategy is tied to the use of renewable raw materials as part of our portfolio. Since 2010, over its 10 years of existence, I’m green™ has avoided the emission of at least 5.54 million tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than one year of automotive emissions in the city of São Paulo. It is worth noting that the sugarcane resin produced still captures up to 3.09 tons of carbon dioxide during its production process, contributing twice to greenhouse gas emissions and maintaining the same performance as conventional resins.
To meet the growth in the demand of society and our partners for sustainable products, which has increased considerably in recent years, we recently announced a US$ 61 million investment to expand our biopolymer production. We will increase our production capacity for green ethylene, produced by the Triunfo industrial unit in Rio Grande do Sul, which will go from 200,000 to 260,000 tons per year. The project, which aims to maintain Braskem as a leader in the biopolymer market, will be started in 2021 and should be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Our carbon removal strategy is tied to the use of renewable feedstock as part of our portfolio. Since 2010, over its 10 years of existence, I’m green™ has avoided the emission of at least 5.54 million tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than one year of automotive emissions in the city of São Paulo. The resin made from sugarcane still captures up to 3.09 tons of carbon dioxide during its production process, contributing twice to greenhouse gas emissions and maintaining the same performance as conventional resins.
In 2014, we developed a study to identify opportunities and climatic risks in 100% of our operations. Based on this, we created an adaptation plan with actions to mitigate or reduce all major potential climatic risks. Our goal is for all actions to be implemented by 2023. In 2021, we reached 91.2% of the actions planned for the year, which led to the fulfillment of 77% of the established plan. We concluded actions related to four climate threats, epidemic risk, impact on energy use due to indirect water use, strong storms, and heat waves, in seven industrial units.
As part of this plan, we have the goal of ensuring that all water used by Braskem comes with low supply risk. Given the challenging global scenario – the water risk assessment highlighted severe droughts as being the highest potential risk in Brazil – these assessments are performed periodically and consider the quantity and quality of water required for the operation of all its plants by region. We currently have a water security index of 70%, that reduced 4 percentage points of reduction compared to 2020. This reduction occurred mainly due to the reduction of water consumption from safe sources in the regions of Bahia and ABC/SP, both in Brazil. In Bahia, this reduction was due to the lower resource availability, so there is a greater uptake of surface water. In ABC, the reason was interruption of the unit to maintenance shutdown, thus reducing absolute consumption of water in this region, which Aquapolo is the main supplier and the major contributor for our water security in the region.
Since 2016, we have implemented the “Shadow Price” Internal Carbon Pricing methodology, with a targeted approach to risk management and in the evaluation of opportunities in our investment decision-making process. In 2020, based on learnings from the application in Brazil, a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) was built with all potential mitigation initiatives or those being implemented. Based on this analysis, a carbon price update was performed, and a global pricing strategy was defined based on an “Implicit Price”, with coverage in 100% of operations in all countries that operate.
In 2021, we signed two contracts for the purchase of renewable energy over the next 20 years, one with Veolia and the other with Casa dos Ventos. Both contracts were established through competitive processes and will enable the construction of new energy generation structures in the regions where they will be implemented. Since 2018, six renewable energy purchase contracts have been signed and, as a result, Braskem estimates that it will avoid the emission of around 2.2 million tons of CO2.
We continue to lead the CDP Climate; In addition, we are also leaders in the CDP Supply Chain Water and Climate (A list), which points out the companies that best engage their procurement chains.
We announced the expansion of our production capacity for green ethylene, a raw material produced from sugarcane ethanol and used for the production of I’m green™, a renewable resin that captures CO2 from the atmosphere. The current production capacity of the industrial unit, in Triunfo, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, will increase from 200,000 tons to 260,000 tons a year of this product. The expansion project has a budget of USD 61 million and should be completed by the fourth quarter of 2022.