Momentum is building in the zero-to-low carbon chemicals and plastics space with many different pathways to production that will give customers more options to reduce their carbon footprint.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the English phrase goes. And so for the global decarbonisation challenge, all technologies and processes are on the table – carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), biogenic CO2, green hydrogen, green methanol, e-naphtha and one day, direct air capture (DAC).
For now, we exclude recycled and bio-based plastics as these processes are already a bit more established.
For many new projects, offtake agreements will be critical, as decarbonisation is neither easy, nor cheap, as Dow CEO Jim Fitterling has said.
With higher costs, the resulting decarbonised products would have to sell at a premium to conventional material – perhaps a considerable one early on – or be supported by government incentives. Or both.
Vioneo launched
The latest splash in the pool comes from an industry ‘outsider’ – AP Moller, the parent company of shipping giant Maersk, as it launches Vioneo to “pioneer fossil-free plastics production”.
Yet, it will be led by industry veterans Jan Secher as chair of the board, and Alex Hogan as CEO. Secher was CEO of Clariant from 2006-2008 and stepped down as CEO of Perstorp in March 2023 after nine years at the helm.
Hogan was business director at INEOS Olefins & Polymers and will start as CEO of Vioneo on 11 November.
The new company has designed a production process using what it calls an “innovative and proven technology” to produce fossil-free polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) at scale, using green methanol as a feedstock.
The €1.5 billion project in Antwerp, Belgium would have capacity of around 300,000 tonnes/year of PP and PE, and could start commercial operations by 2028. Vioneo will start front-end engineering and design (FEED) in Q4 2024 with a potential final investment decision (FID) in 2025.
To make green methanol, Vioneo would use biogenic CO2 and presumably green hydrogen from an electrolyzer. Then presumably again, methanol-to-olefins (MTO) would yield propylene and ethylene, which would be polymerized to PP and PE.
The company claims its technology ensures a fully segregated and traceable supply chain, avoiding the mixing of non-certified and certified feedstocks. Production will also be powered by renewable electricity, significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Vioneo said its PP and PP will save up to 6kg of CO2 per kg of plastic and will be drop-in, virgin quality, suitable for applications across all sectors including medical appliances, home goods, automotive and packaging.
For the planned project to become reality, there are a set of conditions. The €1.5 billion in equity and debt funding will “depend on broad stakeholder support, including updated regulatory frameworks and policies supporting a competitive environment for fossil-free plastics, as well as better conditions for the European chemicals industry such as lower energy costs”, according to Vioneo.
“Furthermore, the success of the venture requires long-term offtake agreements of its customers,” it added.
The newly launched company said is in advanced discussions with several major global brands, including those in healthcare, automotive, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), beauty and home products.
Borealis, infineum to use e-naphtha
Another way to go is using green hydrogen and captured waste CO2 to produce e-naphtha which then can be fed into a conventional naphtha cracker to produce ethylene and propylene, and then PE and PP.
Borealis in August announced a partnership to source eNaphtha from eFuels producer Infinium to produce “ultra-low carbon footprint” PE and PP. It already started buying eNaphtha feedstock in Q2 and plans to offer commercial quantities of low-carbon PE and PP starting in 2025.
“We already see interest in the market from brand owners/OEMs that are leading in sustainability efforts and incorporating alternative feedstock in their products,” a Borealis spokesperson told ICIS.
Infinium is producing eNaphtha at its Project Pathfinder facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, US, and commercial eNaphtha volumes are being shipped to Borealis’ facility in Porvoo, Finland.
The eNaphtha produced at Infinium’s Pathfinder facility has received ISCC PLUS certification from the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) body.
Borealis’ Porvoo cracker has ethylene capacity of 400,000 tonnes/year, according to the ICIS Supply and Demand Database. Downstream capacities include 102,000 tonnes/year of high density PE (HDPE), 150,000 tonnes of low density PE (LDPE), 153,000 tonnes/year of linear low density PE (LLDPE) and 220,000 tonnes/year of PP
Infinium’s eNaphtha is made from captured waste CO2 and green hydrogen produced from renewable power. Infinium’s eNaphtha contains no sulfur and is produced without process emissions, according to the company.
Celanese ccu methanol
Meanwhile, Celanese is already selling commercial volumes of low-carbon methanol and derivatives in its Acetyls chain.
In January 2024, the company announced it started running a CCU project at its Clear Lake, Texas, site as part of its Fairway Methanol joint venture with Mitsui & Co. The project is expected to capture 180,000 tonnes/year of CO2 industrial emissions and produce 130,000 tonnes/year of low-carbon methanol.
“We actively capture carbon off some of the major producers in Clear Lake, Texas, at our site and we take those CO2 emissions… and we recycle it back into the ATR (autothermal reformer),” said Lori Ryerkerk, CEO of Celanese, on a webinar hosted by Chemical Marketing & Economics (CME-STEM) in late September.
This low-carbon methanol can then be used to produce vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), vinyl acetate ethylene (VAE) emulsions and other downstream products, she added.
“We have customers like Amazon that want a lower carbon footprint product, and we are able to meet that customer need,” said Ryerkerk.
The CCU unit takes CO2 emissions that were otherwise being vented into the atmosphere from both Celanese and from third parties to use as a feedstock.
In March 2024, Celanese announced that the ISCC group certified its Low Carbon CCU Methanol under the ISCC Carbon Footprint Certification (CFC) system.
Low Carbon CCU Methanol demonstrated a greater than 70% reduction in carbon footprint relative to a global average benchmark for fossil-based methanol production, as included in EU legislation, according to Celanese.
Dow the granddaddy
Dow’s net zero carbon cracker project is the granddaddy of them all when it comes to scale.
Already under construction, Phase 1 of its Path2Zero project in Alberta, Canada is expected to add around 1.3 million tonnes/year of ethylene and PE capacity by 2027. Then Phase 2 adds another 600,000 tonnes/year of net zero ethylene and PE capacity by 2029.
Yet this represents less than 2% of the likely market demand for low-carbon chemicals and plastics, executives said at Dow’s Investor Day in May.
“We’re starting to see the first signs of the market emerging… What we’re seeing is a market for something like 200 million tonnes of low carbon chemicals by 2030,” said Dan Futter, chief commercial officer of Dow, at Dow’s Investor Day.
“If you compare that with what we would estimate the supply side to be, it is much smaller,” he added.
In one of the Investor Day slides on Low-Emissions Market Opportunities and Supply/Demand Dynamics, the top end of the demand range is around 200 million tonnes by 2030, while the top end of the supply range appears to be around 75 million tonnes by 2030.
“That is the largest dislocation in supply and demand that I’ve seen in my 36-year career. This is going to be a fascinating period for us as this rolls forward,” said Futter.
“One of the key outcomes has to be the emergence of new markets with their own supply/demand dynamics [and thus pricing] for our products that are analogs to the existing ones we sell – analogs with low-emission footprints,” he added.
It’s a brave new world of decarbonized chemicals and plastics. Meaningful quantities will take time to develop but if there is demand, the volumes will come.
Celanese’s Sustainable Solutions portfolio, which includes low-carbon methanol and derivatives along with recycled and bio-based products, represents just around 5% of sales today but is growing double digits on a percentage basis every year, said its CEO.
“I think it is going to be quite some time before it is the majority of our portfolio, but that’s OK because we need time to build our capabilities as well,” said Ryerkerk.
