25 years of the Kyoto Protocol
A milestone for climate protection
Climate protection has been on everyone’s lips even before Greta Thunberg came onto the scene. Reports appear in the news every day on the impact of climate change. It is therefore important to address the issue.
For companies – including Lanxess – climate protection has long been a matter of course. We regularly report on our emissions according to clear rules, and align our actions accordingly.
Yet these rules didn’t exist 25 years ago. It is only since 11/12/1997, the birth of the Kyoto Protocol, that the foundations for these rules have been put in place. Join us on a short journey through time to the beginnings of climate protection and the reporting on this issue.
Framework Convention on Climate Change
The foundations for the Kyoto Protocol were put in place five years before it took place: at the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
It was there that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed. This convention entered into force 2 years later, on 21/3/1994.
The “Berlin Mandate”
In 1995, the first United Nations Climate Change Conference followed in Berlin, COP-1 – the first Conference of Parties. There, agreement was reached on the “Berlin Mandate”, which stipulated that the previous commitments to protect the climate were not sufficient.
A working group was therefore established at COP-1 to develop measures and to determine and negotiate emissions goals and reduction goals. The objective was to develop a binding instrument for achieving the reduction goals – the basis for the subsequent Kyoto Protocol. In addition, Bonn was designated as the seat of the UN Climate Change Secretariat.
It is interesting to note that Angela Merkel, who was German Environment Minister at the time, played a key role in the success of the subsequent protocol. She committed Germany to making a significant reduction in greenhouse gases at a very early stage, and thereby encouraged other nations to do the same.
The Kyoto Protocol
Originally scheduled to take place over the course of 10 days, the COP-3 in Kyoto proved to be an extremely dynamic and somewhat chaotic conference with close to 10,000 attendees. Approximately 2,300 delegates, 3,900 observers from various international organisations and over 3,700 media representatives attended the event on behalf of 158 contracting states and 6 observer states.
After several sleepless nights and insufficient breaks, the conference finally drew to a successful close with an agreement some 20 hours after its originally-planned conclusion. The agreement contained answers to key questions, as well as precise emissions reduction targets for all the industrialised nations. The final document, known as the Kyoto Protocol, was therefore delayed until 11/12/1997.
Even though several key points remained unanswered at the time and addressing them was postponed to a later date, the protocol has proven to provide the foundations and to be a milestone for the climate protection measures with which we are familiar today.
The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol
The next milestone: the document adopted in Kyoto was used a year later in order to develop the GHG Protocol. This was developed in 1998 as a joint initiative between the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) so as to create a uniform framework for calculating greenhouse gas emissions.
It contains the regularly-updated guidelines and specifications which allow for the recording of greenhouse gas emissions, thereby enabling the calculation of a company’s corporate carbon footprint. The GHG Protocol continues to provide the basis for reports by companies concerning their emissions.
To define a company’s optimal climate protection strategy, it is important to have a precise understanding of the sources of CO2 emissions. For this purpose, we use the categorizations and calculation methods from the GHG Protocol to determine our “Corporate Carbon Footprint”.
The main purpose of categorization is to distinguish between the sources of direct and indirect emissions. This ensures, among other things, that emissions aren’t recorded more than once. This protocol divides a company’s emissions into three categories
- Scope 1,
- Scope 2 and
- Scope 3.
Scope what? Scope who?
What do these categories actually mean? And how, exactly, are scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions defined?
Scope 1 = direct emissions
- Scope 1 emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions that a company causes directly. These include, for example, the emissions caused by the use of heating, equipment and the vehicle fleet – i.e. primarily as a result of the direct combustion of natural gas, petrol or oil.
Scope 2 = indirect emissions
- Scope 2 emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions that a company causes indirectly. These include, in particular, emissions that result from the use of purchased energy – for example, electricity purchased for use in the manufacturing process or for the heating or cooling buildings and facilities.
Up to this point, a company’s emissions can normally be recorded and calculated very accurately. Scope 3 emissions are much more complex, however, as they are caused by third parties. It is here that there is particularly high potential for savings when it comes to greenhouse gases. This is because, for example, the use of climate-neutral raw materials can save several thousand tonnes of CO2 each year.
Scope 3 = indirect emissions within the value added chain
- Looking at the entire value chain, Scope 3 emissions take place at two points: before and after the fabrication of the products. Upstream emissions occur when a company purchases raw materials, goods or services from other companies which it then uses in its production processes. The downstream emissions are only generated by the finished product when it is put to use or eventually disposed of. Scope 3 therefore relates to emissions that are not directly caused by the company itself.
Achieving fewer emissions, step by step
LANXESS is currently undergoing a targeted transformation to make our company climate-neutral, put ourselves in a position to be more future-proof and make our contribution to the goals of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Agreement. To achieve these worthy goals, we have launched two major initiatives.
- The “Climate Neutral 2040” initiative relates to our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. We aim to reduce these emissions to zero by the year 2040.
- With the “Net Zero Value Chain” initiative, we aim to eliminate all Scope 3 emissions in the upstream and downstream supply chain by 2050. Here, our focus is primarily on the use of sustainable raw materials, greener logistics and the manufacturing of climate-neutral products.
Climate Neutral 2040 (Scope 1 & 2)
Since our founding in 2004, we have more than halved our emissions – from 6.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalents to 2.7 million metric tonnes. Our goal is to become climate neutral by 2040.
Climate neutrality means:
- drastically reducing the emissions from the company’s own sources,
- purchasing very low-emission or climate-neutral energy,
- in this way, to reduce emissions to below 300,000 metric tonnes, and
- to neutralize these residual emissions through compensatory measures.
Net Zero Value Chain (Scope 3)
With Net Zero Value Chain, we are taking the next big step – the climate-neutral value chain by 2050. Our strategy:
- Sustainable raw materials:
We will make increasing use of sustainable raw materials, e.g. raw materials that are of plant origin, which come from a recycling process or have been made using renewable energy. - Green logistics:
Using innovative logistics solutions, such as “green” inland and/or maritime logistics with sustainable propulsion methods. Improved logistics planning should ensure the higher utilisation of freight capacities, optimised interactions between different modes of transport and a lesser need for transport. - Climate-neutral products:
We are continuously expanding our range of climate-neutral products and solutions that have a low CO2 footprint. In the medium term, we aim to offer low emissions and climate-neutral versions of all our products. Our goal is for our portfolio to have exclusively climate-neutral products by 2050. In this context, we will display the CO2 footprint of all our products.
Sustainable raw materials have the greatest positive impact
As a renewable and abundant resource, biomass has many applications – waste and industrial by-products will also play an increasingly important role as raw materials. Bio-based raw materials are therefore seen as the future basis for a sustainable society, and also play a very important role for us in our NetZero 2050 initiative. To replace fossil fuels and materials with renewable materials, we are developing new techniques, strategies and products.
LANXESS“In the new age of sustainability, it is necessary for products to be designed so that they are more sustainable than ever before. It is necessary for finite resources to be replaced with organic or recyclable alternatives in the medium and long term. Many molecules, including fuels, for example, can be produced from biomass, with the use of algae, for instance. And with the help of innovative processes such as chemical recycling, it is possible to recover molecules from waste materials and reuse them any number of times.”
Already today at LANXESS: more sustainable products
LANXESS already has a whole range of new, sustainable products on the market.
We have been using bio-based raw materials from vegetable oils for a new series of industrial preservatives since the beginning of 2022, for example. We have thereby added sustainable variants to our tried-and-tested Preventol range.
Our preservative innovation Nagardo® is inspired by nature. Nagardo® is obtained through fermenting from the culture of an edible fungus. It is the first new preservative for soft drinks to be approved for this application in the EU for 40 years.
